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1. The “low-fat” diet was not low fat. This study was the equivalent of taking a group of smokers that smoke 50 cigarettes a day, and asking which is better: smoking 48 cigarettes a day, smoking 46 a day, or smoking 80 cigarettes a day. They should have also asked: what if you don’t smoke at all?

   The typical American consumes somewhere around 38% calories from fat. The AHA recommends 30%, which is not much of a change.

   It is interesting that so many studies ignore diets that work: whole-food plant-based diets centered on starches, vegetables, and some fruit, like the McDougall, Ornish, and Rice diets. Typically, these diets are 80%+ complex carbohydrates (not simple sugars or artificial junk), up to 10% fat and up to 10% protein.

   I suggest you look up “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, the life work of Dr. McDougall (www.drmcdougall.com), Dr. Dean Ornish, and the others you find along the way.

   Here is another blog entry on the subject: http://www.zenpawn.com/vegblog/2008/07/18/you-call-that-low-fat/

   Here is what Dr. McDougall said about the study: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008other/080716news.html

   Comment by Harvey — July 19, 2008 @ 6:01 am

2. Thanks for the link. You might be right that it could be a while before the mainstream medical establishment catches on, but hopefully spreading the word on the web will speed things along!

   Comment by Mark Sisson — July 21, 2008 @ 6:50 am

3. Thanks for your comments, Harvey. I agree that low-fat, high-carb diets can work, when compared with the standard American diet of packaged foods, McDonald’s, and 100 Calorie Snack Packs, but the low-fat advocates fail to offer a valid explanation of why their diets are so hard to stick to and why, when compared with low-carb diets, their results are spotty at best. That isn’t even raising valid concerns such as the problem of anti-nutrients in legumes and grains and the huge glycemic load of many fruits and vegetables, like potatoes, which are virtually fat free.

   I would also raise the obvious question of “What about people who have no agriculture,” who as you might know comprised all of humanity up until 10,000 years ago. The fact that the Ornish and McDougal plans make no evolutionary sense whatsoever is, to me, at least disturbing. Am I to believe that humanity was suffering from CHD and diabetes throughout human existence until someone invented the millstone and plow?

   Yes, there were problems with the diets as they were prescribed. I would love to see Atkins administered as it is prescribed along next to Ornish and a placebo group eating whatever they had been prior to the start of the study.

   I’ve been meaning to read the China Study for a while, and I am familiar with Dr. Ornish, though I am not impressed with his lack of an explanation for the Inuit and Masai, as well as other indigenous populations, who somehow eat more than 7% fat a day and don’t suffer from the related disease of Metabolic Syndrome. I simply find their theories lacking in explanatory and predictive power. That leads me to believe that they aren’t good theories, since explaining and predicting are the only two things theories are supposed to do. Clinicians like the Eades’ and Atkins make their living making people healthy.

   McDougal and Ornish do too, to an extant, which is why I would like to see studies of authentic dietary approaches. Animal fat for Atkins and 7% fat for McDougal. We’ll let the data be the judge.

   I read what Dr. McDougal had to say and he compared his live-in program, which I assume is to some extant sequestered to a study in which people were monitored for 2 years while not living in a sequestered location. I’m also assuming people at the McDougal program don’t smoke, drink, and are probably encouraged to exercise. That’s a problem, since the situations have too many variables not in common. Oh yeah, the McDougal population is also self-selected, which might encourage people inclined to low-fat eating to attend and stick to the regimen.

   When the low-fat crowd can give an explanation as to why people get fat beyond caloric balance, I might be more inclined to see things their way. Caloric balance is popular because calories, what ever those are, can be measured. A lump of coal has hundreds of calories, but I’ll be a son of a gun if it will make you fat. Humans don’t–and never have outside of weightwatchers–measured calories. By largely ignoring the role of hormones, they’re doing themselves a disservice.

   Thanks again and I’d like to hear your reply.

   And, Mark, thanks for the comment. I look forward to your book.

   Comment by Nicholas Hahn — July 21, 2008 @ 9:03 pm

4. Following a diet: From what I hear, it is hard to follow ANY diet for long in this culture. Advertising, peer pressure, uncooperative restaurants, and the addictive nature of the junk food (processed or animal) makes any diet that is different than the Standard American Diet difficult to follow. That said, of all the diets I have personally tried, including Atkins, the McDougall diet (starch, vegetables, and fruit - http://www.drmcdougall.com/free.html) has been by far the easiest to follow, and the only effective one.

   Evolutionary sense: What did our species eat in the past? Read this article: http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700pumeatinthehumandiet.htm . Keep in mind that we evolved from primates, a herbivore. Yes, modern primates get a tiny little bit of animal flesh (like a worm crawling on a leaf that they ate, and rarely, a small animal), but that doesn’t make them an omnivore, physiologically. Similarly, you would call a cow a herbivore, yes? They are supposed to eat grass. But that is not what cows eat these days; we feed them grain, soy, downer cows or remnants of downer cows after being picked over by chickens, manure, road kill, and basically any dead animal that can be rendered at a rendering plant. Given this, would you change your definition of a cow from herbivore to omnivore? Of course not. Similarly, the human being is physiologically a herbivore. Do a google search for human and herbivore and you will get a bunch of interesting articles comparing anatomy. I know what you are thinking: our eyes point forward like a predator, and we have canine teeth, right? Well, sure, our eyes point forward, but so do primates, and our “canine” teeth don’t look like the real canine teeth on a true carnivore, like a cat; you can’t use them to tear raw flesh easily. Do the google search, read the above article, and read The China Study; it is an eye-opener.

   GI: The GI is overrated: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/july/glycemic.htm

   McDougall’s results: The results he posted were for 10 days on his diet in his clinic, for the average patient. Obviously that is not long enough to compare to a two year study. I think the point was to show how insignificant the weight loss was on all three diets in the study; 12 pounds in 2 years is laughable. Many people on the McDougall diet testify to losing 100 pounds in a single year and keeping it off for life.

   Fat and Carbs - what really makes you fat: The human body stores 97% of the energy from fat as fat in your adipose tissue. It is so efficient, in fact, that you can take a needle biospy of your fat and determine what kind of food you ate (eg: saturated fat from an animal, trans fat from vegetable oil). The fat literally goes from your mouth to your ass. Carbohydrate cannot be stored as fat; it must be converted into fat first. The conversion process from carbohydrate to fat consumes about 25% of the calories, and that is assuming your body chooses to convert it at all. The Chinese, for example, who are much trimmer than we are, eat a high-starch and vegetable diet (tiny, tiny amount of animal food), and consume more calories than we do, on average. The extra calories from carbohydrate that they get is burned off as heat.

   Read this article: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/sept/sugar.htm and http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/oct/sugar.htm . Read both of them carefully; there are several very important sentences that are easy to miss (like the condemnation on high fructose corn syrup). And here is an article on oil: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/aug/oils.htm .

   I find it amazing that people who want to lose fat say things like this: “I don’t want to gain fat so I need to watch my carbohydrates, because carbohydrates turn into fat easily. But I can eat as much fat and protein as I want.” What the hell kind of mind warping is that??? You are worried that carbohydrates will turn into fat, so you don’t eat them, but instead, eat fat directly, thinking that it somehow won’t get stored as fat. Huh???

   The reason Atkins works in the beginning is because it makes you sick. You know when you are seriously ill with a fever and stay in bed, refusing food and drink, and you lose lots of weight? It is the same thing with Atkins; the all-meat diet is so revolting and putrid that people eat less. When the thought of dinner in an hour caused me to throw up, I knew it was time to give up on Atkins. I know a lot of people who have tried the Atkins diet; not a single one succeeded, and all of them are in worse shape today (fatter, more sickly-looking).

   You may also note that you can induce ketosis by fasting for a few days. Once you burn off your glucose reserve (limited to a max of about 2 pounds, whereas your fat reserves can be many hundreds of pounds), your body switches to burning muscle, and then fat after a few days. Ketone bodies are produced, which you can survive on … sound familiar? Yup, that is what Atkins says is so wonderful. Aren’t these similarities between Atkins and starvation interesting?

   This is the diet I follow: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/050100pupushing.htm . I don’t need to anymore - I could do his regular diet - but I enjoy it so much that I am staying on the more strict version.

   Comment by Harvey — August 3, 2008 @ 6:15 pm

5. Comment:
   “Following a diet: From what I hear, it is hard to follow ANY diet for long in this culture. ”

   That doesn’t negate the effectiveness or the validity of any diet. It just means that people like eating food that isn’t totally healthful.

   “That said, of all the diets I have personally tried, including Atkins, the McDougall diet (starch, vegetables, and fruit - http://www.drmcdougall.com/free.html) has been by far the easiest to follow, and the only effective one.”

   That’s good for you. My father and my brother were avowed vegans for about 11 years. That is until the doctor told them they needed more protein, because their muscle mass was decreasing. After switching to eating meat, both of them have told me that they feel more energetic. However, that also doesn’t validate the healthfulness of eating meat any more than your experience validates veganism. I would urge all people to question accepted wisdom and find what works best for them. Though I do have concerns about B12 levels and protein, but if you feel good, that’s great. I tried eating all vegetarian but I couldn’t do it.

   “Evolutionary sense: What did our species eat in the past? Read this article: http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall/030700pumeatinthehumandiet.htm . Keep in mind that we evolved from primates, a herbivore. Yes, modern primates get a tiny little bit of animal flesh (like a worm crawling on a leaf that they ate, and rarely, a small animal), but that doesn’t make them an omnivore, physiologically. ”

   The astonishing lack of diseases of modern civilization in hunter gatherer societies is some evidence of the healthfulness of eating meat. While I don’t have the books in front of me, I remember the counterpoint to this argument being made–that we indeed are omnivores. The reason that I have read is that–yes–we were evolved from the same ancestor as chimps, but as you can see from the appearance of chimps, they have big bellies. The reason is that their GI tracts were designed to eat a larger amount of plant matter than ours. Prehistoric fruits were more fibrous and less sugary than now, as are modern wild plants. That’s why chimps need a longer GI tract.

   Further, the amount of energy needed to sustain human life would be hard to get without eating vast amounts of food plant matter. This would have been impossible to do during the Ice Ages, when those sorts of luxuries were non-existent for most of the year or even years. Chimps, however, evolved in Africa, far from the northern climates. Clearly, prehistoric humans lived in Europe, right?

   The argument that hunter-gatherers lived shorter than agriculturalists is bunk. You’re comparing the life-span of people who constantly had inter-band warfare, were subjected to intermittent starvation, had no medicine, and were much more subject to the elements to agriculturalists who were far better in those respects.

   “GI: The GI is overrated: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/july/glycemic.htm”
   Tell that to a diabetic. Again, the blood sugar and weight loss levels improved the most on the unrestricted Atkins diet. I checked out McDougall’s argument, and it

   “McDougall’s results: The results he posted were for 10 days on his diet in his clinic, for the average patient. Obviously that is not long enough to compare to a two year study. I think the point was to show how insignificant the weight loss was on all three diets in the study; 12 pounds in 2 years is laughable. Many people on the McDougall diet testify to losing 100 pounds in a single year and keeping it off for life.”

   Again, non-randomized, self-selected individuals attest to that. That doesn’t mean that’s applicable to the whole population of people in the world. Plus, McDougall is creating a false dichotomy. His diet vs. the standard american diet of junk food doesn’t cut it. He needs to compare his diet to a paleolithic model.

   “Fat and Carbs - what really makes you fat: The human body stores 97% of the energy from fat as fat in your adipose tissue. ”

   Fat is benign in the absence of carbohydrates. Fat has little effect on insulin, which is what stores fat as adipose tissue.

   “Read this article: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/sept/sugar.htm and http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/oct/sugar.htm . Read both of them carefully; there are several very important sentences that are easy to miss (like the condemnation on high fructose corn syrup). And here is an article on oil: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2007nl/aug/oils.htm .”
   He makes the insinuation that saturated fat is what causes diabetes. What is the causal mechanism? I find the explanation that insulin sensitivity is decreased by carbohydrate much more persuasive. Again, I don’t purport to know everything, but I enjoy the counter-argument.

   “What the hell kind of mind warping is that??? You are worried that carbohydrates will turn into fat, so you don’t eat them, but instead, eat fat directly, thinking that it somehow won’t get stored as fat. Huh???”

   Fat is benign in the absence of carbohydrate.

   “The reason Atkins works in the beginning is because it makes you sick. You know when you are seriously ill with a fever and stay in bed, refusing food and drink, and you lose lots of weight? It is the same thing with Atkins; the all-meat diet is so revolting and putrid that people eat less. ”

   Putrid? Well, I think that you are not well informed of the Atkins diet. Atkins supported consuming large amounts of vegetables and some fruit. It was definitely not all meat. I think a better explanation is that people tend to lose water at first.

   “I know a lot of people who have tried the Atkins diet; not a single one succeeded, and all of them are in worse shape today (fatter, more sickly-looking).”

   Again, that depends on what they ate, etc. Go to Down to Earth or Kokua and see all the fat people there. That doesn’t prove anything.

   “Yup, that is what Atkins says is so wonderful. Aren’t these similarities between Atkins and starvation interesting?”

   It’s interesting also that ketogenic diets are a means of curing epilepsy and work in about 30% of cases. That might be a clue that humans can be healthy on ketogenic diets. To be quite honest, humans probably were in ketosis for much of their existence.

   Again, I would like to hear the vegetarians’ response to the presence of anti-nutrients in the bulk of their staples, like whole wheat and gluten or beans and lectins. That basically precludes anyone with a sensitivity to gluten, which might be as high as 30% of the population, but at least anyone with celiac disease, from eating your biggest staple. Also, what did humans do without agriculture, which is what their existence was like for most of their evolution, the ice ages included? How does vegentarianism account for the large growth in our brains, composed mostly of fat and cholesterol, which coincided with increased meat eating? How does vegetarianism account for hunter-gather populations that live almost completely off of animal products, yet have little to no disease?

   Ultimately, I can throw a bunch of studies at you, too, but even if you read them you might not be convinced. I just want to put out a different perspective.

   Thanks for the differing opinions, though.

   Comment by Nicholas Hahn — August 4, 2008 @ 6:52 pm

6. Oh yeah, for a peer reviewed view of what pre-agricultural man ate:

   http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/3/682?ijkey=KPJ8NPKvC6lVQ

   And for some clinical evidence of the efficacy of paleo and high(er) fat diets, check out the performance of CrossFitters. I would love to meet a vegetarian with performance like some of the elite, or even very good, CrossFitters.

   Comment by Nicholas Hahn — August 4, 2008 @ 7:08 pm

7. I am not going to answer everything you asked because I don’t want to get into a long debate, especially when I am just repeating what can be found in books and articles. This will probably be my last response unless something important or something simple comes up. Rather, my point is to challenge this cult-like nutritional mentality among crossfitters, and provide people reading this a door into the information that is, in my experience, the most and only effective thing out there.

   I believe that a lot of the questions you asked were already answered in the articles I referenced. I will answer a few, though.

   “That doesn’t negate the effectiveness or the validity of any diet. It just means that people like eating food that isn’t totally healthful.”

   Your question was why it was so hard to follow a low-fat diet.

   “Though I do have concerns about B12 levels and protein”

   You really should research this, and get information from sources in addition to the Weston A. Price Foundation. B12 does not originate from animals. It is made by a bacteria growing in the soil. When we wash our produce, we wash off a lot of the vitamin. Hence, it is a good idea to take a weekly B12 supplement if you wash produce. If you don’t, you have a one in a million chance of developing a deficiency, at which point you will have to start taking the supplement.

   We don’t need more than 5% protein (World Health Organization). Again, this is what The China Study is about: protein. You might also be interested to know that human breast milk, which has enough protein to double a human being in size within a year, is 5% protein.

   “While I don’t have the books in front of me, I remember the counterpoint to this argument being made–that we indeed are omnivores.”

   I read it to; it was from the meat industry. The argument was so pathetic it made me laugh. I really couldn’t believe that they actually put their name behind those arguments.

   “Further, the amount of energy needed to sustain human life would be hard to get without eating vast amounts of food plant matter.”

   Starch has plenty of energy and is readily available.
   Read: http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/jan/grains.htm .

   “The argument that hunter-gatherers lived shorter than agriculturalists is bunk. You’re comparing the life-span of people who constantly had inter-band warfare, were subjected to intermittent starvation, had no medicine, and were much more subject to the elements to agriculturalists who were far better in those respects.”

   True, but that does not invalidate the argument. If your study population dies long before the test is to take place, no conclusion can be made from the test. AFAIK, these populations typically die, for whatever reason, before the age that vascular disease normally kills people. Thus, we cannot conclude that their diet protected them from vascular disease because they were dead before the check could take place. If I remember correctly, Gary Taubes admitted in Good Calories, Bad Calories that these populations had atherosclerosis in their veins. But since the Masai are dead by age 50, how can we tell if they would have died of vascular disease (heart attack, stroke, …) if they had lived to the normal age? From what I could find, the Inuit appear(ed?) to live to almost 60, which is getting close to heart attack age, but is still a little early. Plus, I don’t really know what effect the immense amounts of exercise these populations engaged in on a daily basis had on their disease.

   That said, we do know that the Inuit suffer from other diseases related to animal food consumption; they have the highest rate of osteoporosis in the world. Scientists even unearthed a mother and daughter pair who died in an avalanche 500 years ago. Both had osteoporosis.

   “Again, non-randomized, self-selected individuals attest to that. That doesn’t mean that’s applicable to the whole population of people in the world.”

   Browse around some of his articles (and read The China Study). His dietary advise is based on common diets of several billion people.

   “Plus, McDougall is creating a false dichotomy. His diet vs. the standard american diet of junk food doesn’t cut it. He needs to compare his diet to a paleolithic model.”

   The S.A.D. is the control group. When all diets are compared to the control, you can compare the diets to each other.

   “He makes the insinuation that saturated fat is what causes diabetes. What is the causal mechanism?”

   http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/feb/intensive.htm . Specifically:

   >>> “Resistance to the actions of insulin develops in response to the burdens of the Western diet. This adaptation is made in part to stem excessive weight (fat) gain. One of the primary jobs of insulin is to store fat in the fat cells. After the accumulation of the first 30 pounds of fat, the body seems to say “that’s enough,” and puts the brakes on by reducing the effectiveness of insulin—in other words, insulin resistance develops. With weaker insulin activity, the blood sugar rises. Injections of insulin partially override this natural resistance causing weight gain to accelerate.”

   Comment by Harvey — August 6, 2008 @ 6:42 pm

8. [the rest of my comment]

   To add to that, our cells “put the brakes on” as a survival mechanism; it is difficult to forage for food and run from predators when you are carrying an extra 100 lbs of fat.

   “I would like to hear the vegetarians’ response to the presence of anti-nutrients in the bulk of their staples”

   It is FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) put out by the Weston A. Price Foundation, a pro-meat lobby group that appears to support “organic” animal consumption. It is the same as the B12 FUD. The article I mentioned above has a little more about it. http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/jan/grains.htm and more at http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2005nl/april/050400soypf.htm .

   “How does vegentarianism account for the large growth in our brains, composed mostly of fat and cholesterol, which coincided with increased meat eating?”

   How does a primate, a herbivore, catch enough prey to fuel a brain evolution? Primates, and humans, have no natural hunting ability. We don’t have claws, carnivorous jaws, and we are not particularly fast. If you don’t believe this, go to the forest, strip naked, and try to survive by hunting without any weapons of any kind (remember, weapons come after the brain develops). You are not a lion.

   It is unlikely that you or a primate would have the ability, energy, motivation, taste (you have no taste buds, even now, for raw meat - you like the salt and spices put on the meat), or emotional fortitude to capture and kill enough animals to fuel a large brain. Plus, you still have the fundamental problem of a herbivore; animal food consumption makes you sick. Our cows are some of the sickest animals in the world, but since we kill them in their youth, they are dead before they start to exhibit the obvious signs of disease.

   McDougall’s theory is that our brains, which run on carbohydrate, evolved when we got access to more starchy vegetables. They have enough energy to fuel our bodies and our evolution. They are carbohydrate, so our primate ancestors would have liked them (since they had taste buds for carbohydrates), they were readily available (no sudden super-human hunting abilities needed), they directly fueled the brain (remember, our brains run on carbohydrate), and they provided a wealth of energy.

   “Ultimately, I can throw a bunch of studies at you, too, but even if you read them you might not be convinced.”

   Of course I would read them. I read arguments on both sides of the debate, and have found the whole-foods vegan arguments the most realistic, most plausible, and the most scientific. Some examples of what I have read include: The Whole Soy Story, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price, Good Calories, Bad Calories, The Zone, Atkins, Nourishing Traditions, and I am sure I am forgetting some. Better books are: Breaking the Food Seduction by Dr. Neal Barnard and any of his other books, any book by Dr. John McDougall, The China Study, The Food Revolution by John Robbins, Mad Cowboy by Howard Lyman, and, after seeing their presentations, I have high expectations for Bird Flu: A Virus of Our Own Hatching by Dr. Michael Greger, and Overdosed America by Dr. John Abramson.

   When you read these low-carb books, make sure you read between the lines. The low-carb books almost universally define a high-carbohydrate diet as a processed, junk food diet (white bread, white rice, added sugars, chemicals, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Soy Protein Isolate, etc). This is not a proper diet any more than the Atkins diet. A proper diet is based on whole, natural plant foods that are at most chopped and cooked. And for humans, they are based on starches for energy and hunger satiation.

   “And for some clinical evidence of the efficacy of paleo and high(er) fat diets, check out the performance of CrossFitters. I would love to meet a vegetarian with performance like some of the elite, or even very good, CrossFitters.”

   I am a whole foods, starch-centered, vegan crossfitter. I have had solid performance and strength gains and no plateaus since I started about 6 months ago. I am doing extremely well for someone who has never done anything other than trivial exercise.

   Oops, this was more than I intended. Thanks for keeping an open mind. I think if you really start researching this stuff in earnest, you just may be convinced. I know I thought I would never be a vegan. But here I am, and all the better for it.

   Comment by Harvey — August 6, 2008 @ 9:02 pm

9. Harvey,

   I’m working on a series of blog posts to address this discussion where more people can see it. Thanks for the debate. I hope you check back on the site to continue it. This comments block is just too small to discuss things.

   I’m going to start looking into veganism a bit to see what is up in more detail.

   -Nick

   Comment by Nicholas Hahn — August 9, 2008 @ 12:09 pm

10. […] Here is the discussion between me and Harvey. […]

    Pingback by CrossFit Oahu » Vegetarianism Part 1 — August 14, 2008 @ 9:12 pm

11. Hmm. Interesting ideas.

    I have read quite a bit on paleo-anthropology, and am a grad student studying infectious disease evolution and ecology.

    I havent got a list of papers handy to cite, but I am pretty dead sure that many primates, like us humans, are omnivores. Our closest relatives the chimpanzees are well known to eat whatever protein is available such as insects, fish, shellfish, frogs, lizards, snakes, eggs of any type, and even hunt other primates like baboons or bush babies. In 1994 it was observed that many chimps caught Ebola virus from one of their favorite monkey prey the red colobus. We Americans forget what a great food source insects are for humans around the world. It’s been speculated that insects are a big part of the reason that apes evolved an omnivorous digestive system. Imagine, there you are, picking through leaves and nuts and digging for roots all day. Why not have the ability to digest a fat grub when you find it? Why not use those handy fingers to take advantage of the flying crawling sacs of protein and fat that are all around us in staggering numbers? An example that I’ve witnessed: In Laos there are flying termites that are about an inch long. When the right night hits, they all swarm in the air to mate, then they lose their wings and in the morning the ground is literally covered with expended males and females crawling off full of eggs. I’ve watched families gather these up, rinse them off and fry or boil them for breakfast. It’s absurd to me to imagine that humans were vegans throughout our evolution, when we have the ability to digest such a readily available calorie source. Did we suddenly start eating insects in the past few thousand years? I dont buy it.

    That being said, the most that evolutionary common sense tells me is that we are omnivorous and can safely eat a wide variety of NATURAL foods. If you are eating NATURAL foods, I don’t see why a moderate carb diet would be worse than a low carb diet, from an evolutionary perspective. In hunter-gatherer societies, there are some who do almost all lean meat, some who do mostly fish, some who do mostly veg. And they all stay lean and healthy until they die at age 40-50 from the harsh hunter-gatherer life. However I do believe that a vegetarian (and insect?) diet is more environmentally sustainable than a red-meat and poultry diet.

    Personally I’m roughly following paleo zone because Coach recommends it, and it’s better than what I ate before. But I have to say the Sears and Atkins books seem a little quacky to me. I’ll see how the long-term results are.

    Comment by jon winchester — August 14, 2008 @ 11:42 pm

12. You make an interesting case regarding insects, certainly one that is more plausible than hunting. That said, though this isn’t my area, from what I have read from others, insects and other animal-source foods constitute a trivial source of their food.

    I wouldn’t call a chimp or ape an omnivore just because they get a little animal flesh in their diet. I think that the animal food ends up fermenting to some extent in the intestines of herbivores. Don’t quote me on that, however, because my source doesn’t meet the caliber I am used to, and I have not gone looking for another one yet. Besides, we know that animal bodies (humans included) have a great deal of tolerance for toxins. We can smoke, drink, consume nasty chemicals, catch viruses, etc., and still come out OK if it is not too much. But that doesn’t mean that smoking, drinking, consuming nasty chemicals, or catching viruses is natural or good for us.

    I totally agree with you about the quackiness of Sears and Atkins. I have read a lot of these books, on both sides, and I have started to notice a theme. The ones that bow to pressure to tell the public good news about their bad habits (or some of their bad habits), usually end up sounding quacky, whereas the ones that tell people what they don’t want to hear actually have a pretty darn solid argument. The notable exceptions, so far, are: The Whole Soy Story, Good Calories, Bad Calories, and Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Those books advocate a high-meat diet and don’t sound too quacky to this lay person. However, they have various fundamental flaws in their argument. All three compare their high-meat diet to a junk food diet, for example. None of them say much if anything about a no-junk, no-animal diet (aka: whole foods vegan).

    You might be interested in this Charlie Rose show with Gary Taubes, Dr. Dean Ornish, and Dr. Barbara Howard. Personally, I would have rather seen Dr. McDougall as the spokesman for the low-fat/vegan/… crowd, as I don’t think Dr. Ornish goes far enough. But it is still good.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPyme62niYM

    Comment by Harvey — August 15, 2008 @ 8:24 am

13. Great conversation, guys.

    Winchester: I have to echo your statements about insects. In Korea, they eat silk worm larvae and all sorts of other (to me) weird bugs. They even consider it candy. It wouldn’t be so far fetched to believe that paleolithic man wouldn’t have eaten those, too.

    As for Sears and Atkins being quacks, they came to their conclusions doing clinical work. Atkins had thousands of clients. If they sound quacky, maybe we need to more rigorously test our hypotheses or explain why the clinical evidence diverges from the theoretical. Interestingly, CrossFit was also developed through clinical methods and observation of “what works.”

    Just to throw out some interesting thoughts, my (former) vegan brother pointed out that making more and more plots for grains and beans means destroying ecosystems and necessarily reducing bio-diversity. Trucking the grains from place to place also burns fossil fuels. It seems it is almost impossible to be in balance with the environment and have an expanding population. I found that an intriguing idea.

    Comment by Nicholas Hahn — August 16, 2008 @ 10:00 am

14. “making more and more plots for grains and beans means destroying ecosystems and necessarily reducing bio-diversity”

    Yup. Now multiply that 11+ times to get cow meat. Plus all the methane (apparently a much more significant source of global warming than CO2), manure ponds, and other wastes. If you are interested in the environmental impacts of food consumption, especially animal food consumption, check out The Food Revolution by John Robbins. Half the book is dedicated to the environment. The numbers are jaw-dropping.

    CO2-wise, going whole foods vegan is like not driving ever again, and walking or biking everywhere. That is how much gas it saves (not to mention the methane, water, and land).

    Comment by Harvey — August 16, 2008 @ 2:30 pm

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