31–40 of 139 posts
I've seen a number of articles in the last few years talking about how scavenging meat seems to be much more common amongst animals we typically consider herbivores (like deer) than previously realized. There are also a number of opportunistic omnivorous scavengers that rely more on scavenging than hunting it they hunt at all. This claim seems bogus to me.
It's still a bit bizarre watching the western world switch form carbs good, fat bad to carbs bad fat good in the span of like a decade.
1) We talk about very broad macronutrient classes as though much could be said about them that is meaningful. Fats are not interchangeable; carbs are not interchangeable; proteins are not interchangeable. Talking about grams of fat doesn't actually tell you much (nutritionally).
On a related note, calories are also not nutritionally generic, and our bodies are not simple input/output machines. Calories in / calories out is a gross oversimplification.
2) A substance that is eaten, and the same substance elsewhere in the body, do not have a direct 1-for-1 relationship.
Dietary cholesterol, for example, is not directly deposited in artherosclerosis, and the pathology may have nothing to do with consumed cholesterol at all. (That is, the problem may not be how much you eat, but what causes it to build up as deposits that aren't cleared away.)
3) Measuring blood plasma is a poor metric for many, many things. Intercellular, extracellular, and stored elsewhere (liver, pancreas, bone, etc.) often have nothing to do with plasma values.
And we know this. But we still use it because it's all we can easily do for now. So when we measure your nutrition by comparing blood plasma values of magnesium, for example, we are using a metric we already know correlates poorly with actual magnesium status.
4) Environment matters. Cellular environments are extremely complex. Speaking about nutrition without discussing the thousands of other molecules and tissue structure it interacts with, and where, isn't very helpful.
These factors-- conflating macronutrients, conflating consumption with pathology, using bad metrics for nutrition, and ignoring cellular environment-- are much of what results in all of this nutritional confusion.
We substitute fads or the latest half-understood data for real knowledge, because we don't have much real knowledge. (Despite being able to fill textbooks with what we do know.)
One of the first human foods was actually bone marrow which is basically pure fat. This happened about 2MYA by Homo habilis who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones. Lions and Hyenas would leave huge piles of bones in the middle of the dessert which had been picked clean by vultures. One of our ancestors had the brilliant idea to use a rock to bust open the bones. Well it's a massive source of free…
In “Guns, Germs, and Steel”, Diamond points out that animals in Africa are particularly vicious and dangerous due to their coevolution with humans. Animals outside of Africa rapidly went extinct as evolved humans spread to the rest of the world, since they didn’t have the same evolutionary opportunity.
I know little about evolutionary biology or zoology, but I’m curious if the modern behavior/capability of animals to eat bone marrow could be the result of evolutionary pressure from coevolution with humans.
One of the first human foods was actually bone marrow which is basically pure fat. This happened about 2MYA by Homo habilis who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones. Lions and Hyenas would leave huge piles of bones in the middle of the dessert which had been picked clean by vultures. One of our ancestors had the brilliant idea to use a rock to bust open the bones. Well it's a massive source of free…
"who figured out that you could use rocks to bust open bones." Most carnivores use their teeth to crush bones - lions and hyenas both do it. Heck, we buy doggie treats related to marrow and I have watched my own dogs crush bones to get to the marrow. Marrow is quite accessible to all, including me - omnomnomnomnom.
It's still a bit bizarre watching the western world switch form carbs good, fat bad to carbs bad fat good in the span of like a decade.
Going from a high carb diet to a high fat diet was amazing. "Wait instead of feeling omnipresent urges to overeat and snack, my satiety system actually works? I stop getting dips in energy throughout the day?" Said it before but a diet of bacon and eggs would be superior to the diets of most Americans.
You'd genuinely be better off eating cheeseburgers for breakfast than most breakfast cereals.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Extended simmering (>6 hours) releases much of the nutrients in bones, too - collagen, gelatin, fats, minerals. I frequently slow-cook whole chickens and small bones become so soft they can easily be eaten after about 24 hours. Of course, you don't want to over-do this due to issues like histamine and lead.
Breaking down whole chickens with all bones and connective tissues is one of the areas where a good pressure cooker really shines. I like to make big piles of chicken and beef stock using a pressure cooker, then reducing it on the stovetop. I freeze most of it, and reduce some of the beef stock much further down to demi glacé, freeze it in ice cube trays and use it for sauces and soups.
There are restaurants in Seoul with huge cauldrons of the stuff that have been continuously under boil for decades.
The mineral content is so strong that it never seems to ever pick up the salt you can season it with tableside, but it's otherwise almost tasteless.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find when you make major changes to your diet, your urges to eat, cravings, etc adjust to the new diet after a couple of weeks. I eat a pretty balanced diet that includes plenty of carbs. I also only eat once a day (at about 6-7pm). I get no cravings during the day until just before it's my regular time to eat. I should add, most of the carbs I eat are fruits, beans, whole grains, rice, quinoa, etc... not: white br…
I think fruit, especially the modern stuff, is bad for you. In particular the stuff you want to avoid is. fructose, which is toxic for humans. Fructose is harder on the human liver than alcohol on a gram by gram basis, and over consumption of fructose can cause cirrhosis and fatty liver disease. Edit: source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
Fruit packages fructose with fiber, giving your body more time to process it. It also includes vitamins, minerals, etc that are good for you.
I don't know how you jumped to saying it's worse than alcohol. Alcohol actually damages the cells of the liver, making it function less efficiently. Whereas fatty liver caused by fructose is because of the quantity in a short period, overwhelming the liver.
If you're worried about fructose, then you should be focusing your efforts on hfcs, sugar/sucrose, etc that are roughly half fructose, half glucose that are put into so much processed food with no fiber to slow digestion. A 12oz can of cocacola has 2-3x (39g) the sugar as a piece of fruit. Added sugars account for 14%[0] of the daily calories in the average american's diet (note, added means not natural sugars like that in fruit.. but sucrose, hfcs, etc). Any increase in fatty liver disease would be caused by the inordinate added sugar intake of american's, not fruit.
0. https://www.cdc.gov/nutrition/data-statistics/know-your-limi...
- The brain relies on the liver to produce ketone bodies instead.
- Our cells break down carbohydrates, then proteins and then fats
A diet high in fat only contributes raw calories to the brain - the fuel is unusable directly. The argument basically boils down to: more calories led to bigger brains.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find when you make major changes to your diet, your urges to eat, cravings, etc adjust to the new diet after a couple of weeks. I eat a pretty balanced diet that includes plenty of carbs. I also only eat once a day (at about 6-7pm). I get no cravings during the day until just before it's my regular time to eat. I should add, most of the carbs I eat are fruits, beans, whole grains, rice, quinoa, etc... not: white br…
I think fruit, especially the modern stuff, is bad for you. In particular the stuff you want to avoid is. fructose, which is toxic for humans. Fructose is harder on the human liver than alcohol on a gram by gram basis, and over consumption of fructose can cause cirrhosis and fatty liver disease. Edit: source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM