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| | From:  taka00381 (Original Message) | Sent: 7/6/2007 3:46 AM |
I have seen studies about some amino acids having pro-aging properties such as methionine (ROS leak from mitochondria) and tryptophan (in Peat's essays). So in this respect gelatin and casein (cheeses) would be the ideal long term protein sources as recommended on this site. However, looking at Wikipedia I came across the essential amino acid claims (like EFA, fortunately we don't have essential saccharides yet) -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essential_amino_acid
which don't put gelatin among the best protein sources:
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelatin
QUOTE: Although gelatin is 98-99% protein by dry weight, it has less nutritional value than many other protein sources. Gelatin is unusually high in the non-essential amino acids glycine and proline, (i.e., those produced by the human body), while lacking certain essential amino acids (i.e., those not produced by the human body). It contains no tryptophan and is deficient in isoleucine, threonine, and methionine. The approximate amino acid composition of gelatin is: glycine 21%, proline 12%, hydroxyproline 12%, glutamic acid 10%, alanine 9%, arginine 8%, aspartic acid 6%, lysine 4%, serine 4%, leucine 3%, valine 2%, phenylalanine 2%, threonine 2%, isoleucine 1%,hydroxylysine 1%, methionine and histidine <1% and tyrosine <0.5%. These values vary, especially the minor constituents, depending on the source of the raw material and processing technique.[6]
Gelatin is one of the few foods that cause a net loss of protein if eaten exclusively. In the 1970s, several people died of malnutrition while on popular liquid protein diets. [7]
For decades, gelatin has been touted as a good source of protein. It has also been said to strengthen nails and hair. [1] [2] However, there is little scientific evidence to support such an assertion, one which may be traced back to Knox's revolutionary marketing techniques of the 1890s, when it was advertised that gelatin contains protein and that lack of protein causes dry, deformed nails. In fact, the human body itself produces abundant amounts of the proteins found in gelatin. Furthermore, dry nails are usually due to a lack of moisture, not protein.
Gelatin has also been claimed to promote general joint health. A study at Ball State University, sponsored by Nabisco (the former parent company of Knox gelatin[3]), found that gelatin supplementation relieved knee joint pain and stiffness in athletes. [9] These results have not yet been replicated by other researchers.
UNQUOTE.
As for the casein it's even worst claiming it to be histamine releaser (allergies!) and linking it to cancers (The China Study):
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casein
QUOTE: Casein has been implicated very strongly as a carcinogenic compound, possibly one of the most carcinogenic currently in the human diet, according to The China Study by T. Colin Campbell. Also mentioned is the incidence of higher cancer rates in countries that consume more dairy products, specifically cheese, which has more than 10 times the casein density of milk.
Blocking positive effects of tea
A study of Charité Hospital in Berlin showed that adding milk to tea will block the normal, healthful effects that tea has in protecting against cardiovascular disease.1 It does this because casein from the milk binds to the molecules in tea that cause the arteries to relax, especially a catechin molecule called EGCG. One of the researchers told New Scientist magazine that "[i]t probably also blocks tea's effect on other things, such as cancer."
UNQUOTE.
From my own experience I haven't noticed any benefits after removing casein from my diet for 2 weeks. I also feel better when eating cheese but this might be due to its opioid character and I do suffer from rather severe pollen allergies ...
Also the essential branched-chain amino acids (BCAA) are very popular in sports drinks because they decrease recovery time by increasing the rate of muscle synthesis. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Branched-chain_amino_acids
Eggs would look like the most balanced protein source but they contain high amount of unsaturated fat (getting some AA from eggs?) and the egg white is quite allergenic:
SOURCE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egg_(food)#Cholesterol_and_fat
QUOTE: About 60% of the calories in an egg come from fat; Chicken egg yolks contain about 10 grams of fat. People on a low-cholesterol diet may need to cut down on egg consumption, although most of the fat in egg is unsaturated fat and may not be harmful. The egg white consists primarily of water (87%) and protein (13%) and contains no cholesterol and little, if any, fat.
Some people try to avoid eggs in their diet because they are high in cholesterol, which is concentrated in the yolk. This issue is sometimes addressed by eating only some or none of the yolk. People sometimes remove the yolk themselves, or may use prepared egg substitutes such as Egg Beaters.
There is debate over whether egg yolk presents a health risk. Some research suggests it may lower total Low density lipoprotein ("bad" cholesterol) while raising High density lipoprotein ("good" cholesterol). Some advocate the eating of raw eggs and egg yolks for this reason, as cholesterol in the yolk is healthier when uncooked. However issues of samonella contamination remain for raw eggs. Food scientist Harold McGee argues that the cholesterol in the yolk is not what causes a problem as fat (particularly saturated) is much more likely to raise cholesterol levels than the actual consumption of cholesterol.UNQUOTE. |
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Take a look at:
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/60427.php
I don't know if it would matter if you drank hot tea or coffee with organic, non-pasteurized, non-homogenized milk and you had Mead acid in your cells, but there's no reason to take the chance, and most people have AA in their cells and use the more common kinds of milk anyway. |
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Also, from that report cited in the above post, is this point, which I've made many times:
QUOTE: ...Dr. Stangl said that another important lesson from their research was that it was vital in nutritional studies to exclude confounding factors as far as possible. Often, the effects of a single nutritional compound or beverage such as red wine, olive oil and so on, are analysed. But, it is difficult to assign clearly the observed effects and separate them from the surrounding food matrix (such as adding milk) that may bias results. It was therefore important to collect all data accurately and include potentially confounding factors in the analysis... UNQUOTE. |
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I have mentioned the Loren Cordain's Paleodiet site ( http://www.thepaleodiet.com ) previously and almost started believing what he says (except the "politically correct" Omega-3 stuff) until I found the following article:
SOURCE: http://www.westonaprice.org/bookreviews/paleodiet.html
The Paleo Diet
By Loren Cordain, PhD
Review by Sally Fallon
Peter Paleolith goes ahunting and catches himself a plump prairie hen. Using tools of stone and bone, he removes the entrails and throws them away. Then he plucks off the feathers and peels off the skin--he'd like to eat the succulent fat underneath but he learned during his rites of passage that the fat is taboo. Next he cuts off the dark meat and discards that too. Deftly he separates the white meat from the bone. The bones go in the trash heap and Peter Paleolith is left with. . . skinless chicken breasts!
Then Peter prepares his meal. Because salt didn't exist in those days, he bathes his chicken breasts in lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. He greases his Paleolithic pot with canola oil, the kind his elders recommend. He seasons his meal with ground black pepper or perhaps chili powder which he always carries with him in a leather pouch. And, because he doesn't have any sugar, he washes down his Paleolithic meal with. . . a diet soda!
If this sounds absurd, it's because absurd things happen when a professor of exercise tries to write a diet book that captures the current interest in the so-called caveman diet and adheres to political correctness at the same time. This book is as pc as pc can be--and totally ignorant of what we know about hunter-gatherer diets. Everyone who has described the diets of primitive peoples--Stefansson, Samuel Hearne, Cabeza de Vaca, Weston Price--has detailed the great emphasis these groups put on animal fat. Animal foods rich in fat were the basis of these diets. Animals were hunted selectively to procure those richest in fat. In good times, only the fattest parts were eaten, the lean meat was thrown away. In fact, the one thing Paleolithic Peter would never have eaten was a skinless chicken breast. He wanted the fat, the entrails, the bones, the contents of the stomach. . . the lean meat went to his dogs.
Cordain makes a lot of other crazy claims. 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. 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. 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.
Cordain says that primitive man did not eat salt. Yet we know that salt was available in many parts of the world, principally from brine on the seacoasts and salt flats in the interior. Salt-rich blood from game was collected and used in food preparation. In Africa, ashes of sodium-rich marsh grasses were added to food.
Unfortunately, Cordain's Paleo Diet is not only absurd, but also dangerous. High levels of lean meat lead to vitamin A deficiency and a host of health problems, even heart disease, which Cordain's high-protein diet is supposed to prevent. There's no good source of calcium in his diet and no salt, so vital for digestion. He recommends rubbing flax oil on meat before cooking--a recipe for creating carcinogenic oxidation products. And then there are those diet sodas. . . bound to cause trouble in a diet so lacking in protective nutrients. Fortunately, Peter Paleolith never ate this way, or we would not have made it this far. |
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| That's a good article, and the author makes some of the same points I've been making for a while now. Basically, I would add that there is no reason to just look at the molecular-level evidence, since there is so much of it now., rather than speculating about what "cave men" did. It's gotten so silly that I think of the Geico insurance company TV commercials, where the narrator says, "so easy a cave man can do it." The same is true of speculative historical diets - anyone can do it. My guess is that early humans ate a lot of palm/coconut, certain fruit, and shellfish, since these would have been easy to obtain in large amounts. |
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Everyone with an agenda has their own speculation as to what people in prehistoric times ate.
The Animals Right Group, PETA, believes that we were vegans. Always have been, always will be.
Creationists generally would follow the guidelines from "The Makers Diet". This would mean following all of the Biblical rules associated with diet, such as no shellfish, etc. There is a list of about 12 different birds that can't be eaten, etc.
They all seem to kowtow to the current trends though, such as "eat a diet high in cruciferous vegetables, rich in life giving omega-3 fatty acids, and loaded with fresh fruits". If the current science suggested stuffing Doritos in your face was the best way to live a long life then all of these people would change their line to match that and claim that that's what they have been saying all along. |
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In his newest newsletter, Cordain Ph.D. presents "evidence" that the Hunter-Gatherer has been consuming more PUFAs then the present human and much less saturated fat:
http://www.thepaleodiet.com/newsletter/newsletters/PDNewsVol3No4.pdf
It's astounding how many academically educated people and university professors support the Omega-3 dogma :-( It is really like a religion but these people are paid by the tax money for being scientists ... |
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I coudn't resist to post the comment from the July 13, 2007 volume of Science. This is the #1 scientific journal in the world which openly "advertises" Cordain's claims. Why no one has looked at the coconut oil consumption of the "Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand islanders"?
The Health Benefits Of Paleocuisine
Swedish men with diabetes showed a dramatic
drop in their blood sugar after 3 months on a
“Paleolithic�?diet, according to researchers in
Sweden, who found that a diet free of grains
and dairy products worked better than the
oft-recommended “Mediterranean�?diet.
Of 29 men with heart disease and diabetic
conditions, 14 showed blood sugar returning to
normal after restricting themselves to lean meat,
fish, fruits, root vegetables, eggs, and nuts.
What’s more, their glucose tolerance improved
by 26%, as shown when glucose levels were
tested after they ate sugars. But the 15 men on
the Mediterranean diet, whose intake included
grains and dairy products, showed only a
7% improvement in glucose tolerance, according
to Lund University physician Staffan Lindeberg,
whose study was published online this month in
Diabetologia. Lindeberg says the study was
inspired when he learned in the 1990s that
Papua New Guinea’s Trobriand islanders,
who live on a “preagricultural�?diet, had no
heart disease or diabetes.
Lindeberg speculates that a Stone Age diet
may owe its success with diabetics to the absence
of “bioactive substances,�?such as the casein protein
in milk and lectin in grains, which may impair
glucose tolerance—as they do in studies of rats.
Evolutionary nutritionist Loren Cordain of
Colorado State University in Fort Collins says the
study is “significant�?because “it represents one of
the first well-controlled trials of a modern paleolike
diet to ever have been conducted.�?/FONT> |
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| The only "good" thing is that if they follow their own advice, they will learn that they are wrong "the hard way." However, they are leading a lot of people down the same path, unfortunately. I like to tell people that there are "orders of magnitude" to human thought, and some people, no matter what credentials they possess or how high they score on an IQ test, simply can't get beyond a certain order or level, apparently because they get fixated on certain ideas. This seems to be the case for this individual. His claim that hunter-gatherers had a 20% PUFA diet made me laugh, at least. If his diet is 20% or more PUFAs, I don't think we'll be hearing him make his claim for much longer ! |
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Hans said:
The only "good" thing is that if they follow their own advice, they will learn that they are wrong "the hard way."
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Well, I can testify that I followed similar advice, and I learned the hard way... the advice isn't all bad, just incomplete and plagued with speculation...
It seems to me that most people eating this diet are eating mostly beef, lamb, and the organ meats thereof.
Of the "raw" paleo diet followers, I note that those who claim to be comfortable or successful with the diet are eating mostly the organ meats and fat of high quality beef or lamb and not too much muscle meat. I assume that they are getting only small amounts of PUFAs.
On a slight tangent, it's interesting that Banting (who I believe plays a noteworthy side role in the Paleolithic Diet theater) was advised not to eat pork... because it was thought that there was "starch" in it.
I on the other hand, was not able to get beef or lamb products (in the U.S. I was able to get lamb and lamb fat... and didn't notice any problems). After 6 months of pork I discovered that Hans Selys was right, and so was Houssay. This knowledge I regret having to learn the hard way.
In hindsight, it seems that one can do well on a raw version of the "Paleolithic" diet if the food consists of adequate organ meat and fat of healthy grazing animals that don't accumulate an inordinate amount of PUFAs in their tissue and some fruits and berries. As for a cooked version... I unfortunately tried that also and found it extremely debilitating. Of course, lots of oxidized cholesterol, HCA's, etc.
I think the biggest problems I had with the raw Paleolithic diet were:
1. Forensic techniques that I cannot verify as to their accuracy. I don't believe that archeologists are necessarily correct in their readings of these bones and relics, in their assumptions about the health of the Paleolithic people, or in the true nature of their diets.
2. Oversimplification. The story of the scientist who ate what he considered to be an eskimo diet is the perfect example. Lack of understanding of foundational elements in basic health and disease -- following the diet was for me an attempt to find an easy way out of various health problems without having to wade through and sort out difficult complexities and without having to understand things more fully.
3. Limitation of alternative possibilities in the search for health and freedom from illness. The impossibility of following such a diet in an evironment that doesn't provide lots of beef, lamb, or similar grazing animals along with a variety of their organ meats was the wake up call for me. So I have to find more understanding and other ways to survive in less hospitable settings. And this seems to be only for the better... because it's not all so great to be trapped in Paleolithic times as one might think at first.
There are often several ways to accomplish difficult tasks... The less knowledge and understanding, the more one has to rely on brute force and crude techniques to achieve the task. The more knowledge and understanding... the more one can appear to do miraculous tasks with little or no apparent or immediate effort. |
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I would be a bit cautious about the organ meat - it has very high purine content and may lead to gout, i.e. accumulation of uric acid crystals in the body, mainly joints. It seems I may be suffering from this condition due to past high meat consumption. I agree with Hans that removal of AA from the body would lessen the inflammatory reaction to uric acid crystals but this isn't the final solution. Having rock solid crystals of needle-like shape (which sometimes grow inside tendons and cartilage and thus break it) or "sand" inside the joints wouldn't do any good even to Mead acid-only person. In this respect I found the teaching of Dr. Norman W. Walker who lived to be over 100 years old on his vegetable juice diet interesting. This diet seems to be the best one for uric acid removal from someone's body but I am not sure it may also cause other damage. Hans, what do you think about this person? Doesn't his age justify his diet?
http://www.vitaminb17.org/about_dr_walker.htm
http://www.detoxlife.com/normanwalker.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_W._Walker |
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Here is an interesting comparison of human longevity across ages including Paleolithic vs. Neolithic people:
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml
I don't know how much of this is a speculation but it seems at least in part to be based on a sound science. |
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People on the following forum seem to have very bad experience with practicing the Loren Cordain, PhD Paleo diet. But they don't seem to realize that the problem is the consumption of PUFAs and not the fruit ...
http://activenocarber.myfreeforum.org/archive/loren-cordain-and-fruit__o_t__t_1388.html
or
http://tinyurl.com/2rvlgo |
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Taka,
Diets such as Atkins and Paleo might not be all that bad if people weren't baking, frying, grilling, or otherwise cooking their meats.
The only sure fire safe way I can find to cook meat it to boil it in water, since there is no oxygen to oxidise the cholesterol. Meat isn't bad by itself by the process of cooking it tends to damage the cholesterol.
I happen to really like chicken, so I buy a very low fat chicken breast and cut off any extra visible fat. Then I cut it into cubes and boil it in water until it is no longer pink, which usually takes 7-8 minutes if not frozen. Then to add some flavour I will usually serve it with some white rice, butter, and salt to taste. And even though vegetables aren't all that good because of the fibre in them I like to have some broccoli with it. |
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I think it is important to note that Stefansson while describing his adventures in the arctic, “My life with the Eskimo�?writes that they ate everything. No bit of fat, protein, bone or hide went to waste from the animals they hunted and consumed. Our American psychological perception of food would prohibit consuming all but the lean muscle of an animal. All the truly nutritious organ meats and fat would be left for scavengers. He frequently makes a point that meat without the fat is dangerous for any extended time, and described how terribly ill he and members of his party would become if they only food available were lean meats.
It is also worthy to note that he and another individual were the object of a year long study through Bellevue hospital where he and his friend ate a meat only diet. The biomedical establishment predicted doom and death as sure as the sun rises in the east, but to their chagrin both individuals thrived and were in excellent health at the end of the study. You may read about the Bellevue study as well as excerpts of his arctic experiences with the Eskimo here: http://www.biblelife.org/stefansson1.htm
From what I have read of Stefansson and his ethnographic studies seem to confirm in principal the facts established within your essay series. I have yet to read Dr. Price’s work, though it is on my to-read list.
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| I would like to see which kind of intestinal bacteria (if any) are present in these meat-only eaters. The undigestable "complex" carbohydrates are said to be essential for growing the healthy intestinal "flora and fauna" ... Perhaps these people don't need any bacteria to synthesize the essential vitamins and "short chain fatty acids" like butyrate for them because they get everything from the meat. And the bacteria would turn quite "clingy" in the presence of the high iron and oxidized meat. The intestinal bacteria may be in fact behind the ill effects of high carbohydrate diets combined with substances like PUFAs which irritate them to spill their endotoxins throughout the body ... |
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