RoR: Forum

Thanks, Bill! I agree with several of the points made in the review. I look forward to reading the book. (Right now, I am eating pistachios.)

Post 1

Tuesday, March 12, 2013 - 8:06pm

Thanks, Bill.

As expected, here are a few cents worth of commentary on the review:

The most persuasive argument Zuk marshals against such views has to do with the potential for relatively rapid evolution, major changes that can appear over a time as short as, or even shorter than, the 10,000 years Cordain scoffed at. There are plenty of examples of this in humans and other species. In one astonishing case, a type of cricket Zuk studied, when transplanted from its original habitat to Hawaii, became almost entirely silent in the course of a mere five years. (A parasitical fly used the insects’ sounds to locate hosts.)

Okay but we need to check the genes of the crickets, we need to measure the rate of change -- the evolution -- which occurred over time. If you look at an 'end-product' like a behavioral change, then you can trust that it came from genetic changes -- but you should at least verify how much genetic change occurred. The reason this is important is because there are many things that can matter. For instance, let's say the behavior change in the crickets was limited to a change in just one gene. From the outside, the behavior of the cricket looks totally unlike anything that we've every seen before. But, on the inside (at the level of the genes), the cricket is still over 99% the same cricket as it was 5 years ago when it was transplanted to Hawaii.

It seems like Zuk glosses over this point, which reminds me of global warming alarmists who refuse to look at the direct measurement of a greenhouse gas effect (i.e., more heat at high-altitude) just like the priests who refused to look through Galileo's telescope -- because they felt it proper to go ahead and just infer what they wanted to infer, without taking the time to look and see.

There are human examples, as well, such as "lactase persistence" (the ability in adults to digest the sugar in cow’s milk), a trait possessed by about 35 percent of the world’s population — and growing, since the gene determining it is dominant. Geneticists estimate that this ability emerged anywhere from 2200 to 20,000 years ago, but since the habit of drinking cow’s milk presumably arose after cattle were domesticated around 7000 years ago, the more recent dates are the most likely.

Let's take the minor point first: When did we domesticate cattle? It was at least 10,000 years ago, or by 8000 b.c. (1). So, the more recent dates are not the most likely. Instead, they are impossible. The less recent dates are the most likely. Indeed, they are the only possibility. Add to that that we've got pigs carried (by humans) to Mediterranean islands 11,000 years ago (2) and "domesticated" dog dna that goes back even further. (3) But that's the minor point. The major point is that a third of us can now handle milk sugar. But there are 2 problems with using that as an example to show that we can safely ignore -- or even pay less attention to -- evolutionary adaptations of early humans:

1) It's only a third of us. If public health policy pushed milk consumption, then the majority of us would be harmed instead of helped. Conversely, if public health policy pushed PaleoFoods, then most of us would benefit.

2) It's only the sugar digestion. Milk is not just a carrier for milk sugar. Instead, it is a lot of things. It has a lot of ingredients. Let's guess and say that there are a million ingredients in milk. This guess may be wrong, but it is correct when viewed inside the wide-but-illuminative error margin of 4 orders of magnitude (there are definitely more than 100 ingredients in milk, and there are definitely less than 10 billion ingredients in milk). Using the lower end of our fancy, new and totally-correct range of ingredients (100), we can see that lactose is only at most 1-out-of-100 things. Adapting to 1% of something isn't necessarily proof of a whole lot of adaptation.

For instance, what if we adapted to the lactose but still retained sensitivity (allergy) to milk proteins? Could we say that, because we can now handle one of the ingredients in milk (lactose), can we then say that we have adapted to milk? What about the proteins in milk? In fact, don't we have to adapt to all of the ingredients in milk before we can say we have adapted to milk and that it "does a body good?"

By the way, this same type of debate was had about baby formula vs. mother's milk -- Can't we give babies "evolutionarily-new" ingredients (e.g., soy protein) without causing them any distress or disease? -- and it turns out that the "evolutionary-diet" side won that debate.

Ed

Reference:

(1) Earliest date for milk use in the Near East and southeastern Europe linked to cattle herding.
(2) Pre-Neolithic wild boar management and introduction to Cyprus more than 11,400 years ago.
(3) [The origins of dogs: archaeozoology, genetics, and ancient DNA].

Post 2

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 4:34am

ET: By the way, this same type of debate was had about baby formula vs. mother's milk -- Can't we give babies "evolutionarily-new" ingredients (e.g., soy protein) without causing them any distress or disease? -- and it turns out that the "evolutionary-diet" side won that debate.

Based solely on the review, I am predisposed to agree with the thesis of the book because the review mentioned facts that I know. I let it go at that. I have to read the book to know for sure.

Ed has decided that the book's thesis is flawed and is arguing against it based solely on the review. He does not need to read the book because his mind is made up; he cannot be confused by the facts. It seems to me like an attempt to reduce cognitive dissonance, but I am just guessing.

As for soy formula for babies, we used it, in addition to breast feeding, and our daughter seems fine now, certainly no worse off. My wife is intolerant of soy, in fact. I eat tofu often. The point is that "we" did not domesticate cattle or wheat or soy or peanuts or whatever else. Some of us did. Diet is highly individualized. Different people like different things with different outcomes. My ancestors did not come from the Middle East 11,000 years ago and I like cow's milk and goat's milk and peanuts and soy and wheat and... In that I am lucky, other people, not so much.

I will say also that I on a computer project in Cleveland I had a supervisor whose undergraduate degree was in anthropology. He said that they excavated a pre-Columbian tribe near Toledo who apparently died out from malnutrition: they lived on island and enjoyed an abundance of fresh water fish. That was all they ate. (Nothing else in the middens.) It killed them. The lesson is that diversity of diet is the best general plan.

Finally, as a point of humor, in the cyberpunk novel, Islands in the Net by Bruce Sterling, the heroine's husband only eats processed foods. Natural vegetables have natural insecticides and a lifetime of that can only be bad for you.

Post 3

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 10:35am

Might I also point out that the crickets in Hawaii, the crickets would most likely die if they chirped. This results in super fast natural selection that only non-chirping crickets would successfully mate.

On the other hand, eating grains and legumes and milk doesn't kill you.

Milk causes your blood acidity to go up, so your body neutralizes it by removing calcium from your bones. Hence when you get older, you are more likely to have osteoporosis. Also, with a more acidic body, your skin and nails are more susceptible to fungal growth. But a person who consumes milk can still successfully reproduce.

Grains and legumes do all sorts of bad stuff. They have a variety of lectins (seed anti-bodies) (such as gluten) that attack a human's digestive system, including: beneficial digestive bacterial flora (kills em), small intestines (punches holes, allowing bad stuff into the bloodstream), and then having foreign stuff in your blood can cause all sorts of autoimmune problems. Thyroid problems, inflammation problems, etc. Grains also increase your blood acidity level (see milk). Eating highly refined grains is suspected to cause bone growth problems, which can result in things like a small jaw... But despite all of these problems, a person who eats them can still successfully reproduce.

Milk, grains, and legumes are really cheap to make, and they have enabled lots of people to survive off of the calories provided by these nutritionally deficient energy sources, who would have otherwise died from lack of energy. This is a different evolutionary situation then the cricket case where a behavior causes unsuccessful reproduction & death. Instead of a new context causing selectional death, the new context causes massive population increase.

Mating preferences based on whether a person's jaw is too small for their teeth and nose is small is a much slower evolutionary process than selectional death.

Its laughable that in the end of the article, the author implies eating grass fed/natural diet animals, vegetables, and sparingly fruit is "junk food".

Post 4

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 8:45pm

Mike,

It just occurred to me that all attempts to weed through data in search of the truth are attempts "to reduce cognitive dissonance." It's not that you don't want to reduce it. Everybody in their right mind should want to reduce such a thing. The key is how you go about it. Do you ignore a point in order to hope it goes away? Do you end a discussion by retroactively redefining a key term which was previously used in a vague or ambiguous way? Do you comment on the review of a book without ever first reading the b ...

Er, scratch that last part.

:-)

Yeah, I sure came out of the starting gates really bucking wild. But that's just my habit. After I step on someone's toes, I usually turn into a super-nice guy who is concerned not just with thinking rationally and noncontradictorily or whatever, but also with acting maturely and in a more generous, polite tone. For instance, allow me to politely respond to you in a generous manner:

As for soy formula for babies, we used it, in addition to breast feeding, and our daughter seems fine now...

Okay, that is good. I'm glad you have a healthy daughter. It may be that what you did did nothing detrimental to your daughter. Even if a study were to show a statistical difference between infants fed formula vs. infants fed breast milk -- and your daughter got both so she is in good standing -- even if a study were to show a statistical difference, it wouldn't mean that you did anything that was definitely wrong. However, there is animal research (1) pointing to a possibility that too much soy too soon in life can be bad, and there is some human research (2) showing that breast feeding is statistically better for infants than formula feeding (though no big difference was found between the soy- and milk-based formula tested in the study).

The point is that "we" did not domesticate cattle or wheat or soy or peanuts or whatever else. Some of us did.

That's a good point.

... a pre-Columbian tribe near Toledo who apparently died out from malnutrition: they lived on island and enjoyed an abundance of fresh water fish. That was all they ate. (Nothing else in the middens.) It killed them. The lesson is that diversity of diet is the best general plan.

I would like to politely disagree with you. The condition you describe is called "rabbit starvation syndrome" [I think because of early arctic/antarctic explorations where the only whole food they carried/caught on the expedition was lean rabbit meat. And it killed them.] It involves a build-up of ammonia in the body from the over-oxidation of protein as a fuel source. There wasn't anything special about these Toledo natives -- everybody who tries it, gets rabbit starvation syndrome -- something special requiring them to have to have more of a raw "diversity" of diet. People in those situations need to reduce the proportion of protein in their diets. A good benchmark for people like that is to get the protein down to less than or equal to 35% of all calories. Then the problem goes away for 99.9% of the people who try it (whether they are ancient Toledo natives or modern internet philosophizers, or whatever).

To adopt the opposing view, the lesson is that uniformity of diet is the best general plan. It's not that everyone has to eat the same, but that almost everyone who eats a diet that is 70% protein gets rabbit starvation syndrome, almost everyone who eats a diet that is 7.0% protein gets muscle atrophy and osteoporosis, almost everyone who eats a diet that is 0.70% protein dies within about 16 months, almost everyone who eats a diet that is 0.070% protein dies within about 16 weeks, etc. The reason for all of this uniformity in outcome is the uniformity, however imperfect, in human physiology. Of course, quirky things like allergies alter everything and need to be worked around with a dietary individuality that relies on diversity.

I agree that some diversity is needed, but having some uniformity -- such as the uniformity of getting more than 7.0% protein -- is not only just as important, it is something which can be communicated to everyone to prevent important harms on a wide scale.

Ed
(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/13, 8:58pm)

Post 5

Wednesday, March 13, 2013 - 8:47pm

Oops. Forgot to add the studies:

(1) Early life exposure to genistein and daidzein disrupts structural development of reproductive organs in female mice.
(2) Developmental status of 1-year-old infants fed breast milk, cow's milk formula, or soy formula.

Ed

Post 6

Tuesday, March 19, 2013 - 10:11pm

Hi Dean,

You wrote,

Milk causes your blood acidity to go up, so your body neutralizes it by removing calcium from your bones. Hence when you get older, you are more likely to have osteoporosis.

I think a better way to say this is that certain foods (milk, to some extent, although it is not the most acid-producing food) cause your blood pH to go down. A higher blood pH is more alkaline; a lower one, more acidic. However, blood pH does not vary very much. It stays within a range of 7.35 to 7.45. What happens if it starts to drop towards the lower value of 7.35 is that, as you say, your body removes calcium from your bones to buffer the acid and to prevent the blood pH from falling below the lower threshold.

The body of young person -- under the age of 40 -- has a natural sodium bicarbonate buffer which protects against the effects of an acid-producing diet, but after the age of 40, that buffering capacity declines rather dramatically, which means that the body must then counteract an acid-producing diet in other ways, notably by removing calcium from the bones.

However, there are ways for an older person to protect against the effects of a high-protein, acid producing diet, and that is by consuming a diet high in bicarbonate precursors like fruits and vegetables. One can also take potassium bicarbonate as a supplement, which is what I do to keep my urine alkaline (at a pH of 7 or above). An alkaline urine is a good proxy for ensuring that one has enough bicarbonate precursors to maintain adequate calcium balance and bone mineral density. A particularly good source for KHCO3 is a product called "Potassium Basics," produced by Dirk Pearson and Sandy Shaw and sold by Life-Enhancement.com.

Potassium bicarbonate has also been shown to prevent sarcopenia, i.e., muscle atrophy, that accompanies aging.

Bill

(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/19, 10:45pm)

Post 7

Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 12:53pm

Thanks, Bill! I was wondering, you know, if the counter to too much milk would be more chili peppers? Also, if milk causes osteoporosis, what holds India upright? Anyway, thanks for the advice.

I am also a customer of Durk and Sandy, way back and even today, mostly for the mental acuity supplements.

DMG: Not to diss you... I think that we each make our own choices based on what we know and what we know about ourselves. I appreciate your warning about milk. I doubt that your going without it will harm you. I will continue to drink it, about a half gallon a week. I used to do a show for the Ann Arbor Hands-on Museum about "Bases and Acids" using kitchen items. Thai food is classic for mixing citrus with peppers.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 3/20, 12:55pm)

Post 8

Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 4:12pm

Bill, Thanks for the tip!

MEM, A close relative of mine's diet is most all grains. He agrees with me that the government's nutritional recommendations are likely politically motivated, and that the government's word is not to be trusted... and yet... he still goes with the fat is bad and cholesterol causes heart disease message. I'm not so sure if he really believes that anymore, or if he is just more interested in minimizing the amount of resources he spends on food so that he can spend it more on other things he wants to do. (Refined wheat/oat/corn/rice cereals are much cheaper than grass fed beef)

Post 9

Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - 11:49pm

Thanks guys!

Actually, milk is not that acid forming. It is only slightly so. Much more acid-forming are foods high in sulfur-containing amino acids, such as cheese, meat, fish, eggs and whey protein. But there's nothing wrong with acid-forming foods, so long as they're balanced by alkaline foods containing bicarbonate precursors.

Regarding serum cholesterol, it is worth paying attention to, because LDL can be a contributing factor in heart disease. We know this, because children born with familial hypercholesterolemia, who have very few LDL receptors in their livers, can have heart attacks as early as the age of two.

Post 10

Thursday, March 21, 2013 - 6:55am

Bill: Also people who consume lots of calories (which results in the body making LDL carriers) combined with eating highly reactive foods (like alcohol and fructose) that muck up the LDL carrier's identifiers, preventing a functioning liver from identifying and recepting the mucked up LDL...

Post 11

Thursday, March 21, 2013 - 11:57am

Dean,

I should also have pointed out that your friend who eats almost all grains is eating an overly acidic diet, and is probably risking osteoporosis as he gets older. If he doesn't like fruits and vegetables, tell him to get take a potassium bicarbonate supplement to offset the acidity.

A good way to ensure that one is sufficiently alkaline is to check one's urine pH to make sure that it is in the alkaline range -- 7 or above -- and if it isn't, to take enough bicarbonate precursors like fruits and vegetables or a potassium citrate or bicarbonate supplement to get it there. Ideally, one's first morning urine should be 7.0 or higher. You can buy pH strips online for this purpose.

Of course, if he's your friend, he may be young enough right now not to have to worry about this, but when he gets into middle age and beyond, he will certainly have to change his diet to include more fruits and vegetables an/or take bicarbonate supplements to complement it.

Post 12

Friday, March 22, 2013 - 5:18pm

If there is ONE product that should be removed voluntarily by the food industry it is high fructose corn syrup! It is even more debilitating than refined white sugar! It can raise your blood triglycerides through the roof!!

Post 13

Friday, March 22, 2013 - 7:04pm

Right, Jules. I eat nothing that contains high fructose corn syrup, but apparently most people do. The average person does not pay a whole lot of attention to good nutrition. Just look at most of the stuff on supermarket shelves. It wouldn't be there if people didn't buy it.

Post 14

Friday, March 22, 2013 - 7:05pm

Jules: AFAIK, whether the fructose and glucose are paired into sucrose doesn't matter, something like "The digestive system cuts the bond in the sucrose super quick noproblemo, and you immediately get a free fructose & glucose just like in HFCS".

I'd say that plain corn syrup (all glucose) is better than HFCS and sucrose. HFCS is 45-55% free fructose and 55-45% free glucose. Sucrose is a fructose-glucose molecule pair.

Glucose is Earth's life's favorite energy storage molecule. Plants make it and add it to long chains called "starch". Animals store glucose in a branched structure called glycogen (branched so that it has more ends to strip off more quickly when needed). Uh, yea, then there are lipids/fats, which plants and particularly animals use for longer term energy storage (slower usage, but easier to store and has a higher energy density).

Fructose is created in ripening fruits, as a plant converts starch in their fruit into glucose, fructose, and sucrose. Plants don't care that the fructose is a highly reactive substance (mainly useless for controlled energy usage)... they just make it to accelerate the ripening process and attract animals. Animals digest fructose, put it in the bloodstream, and the liver takes it as soon as it can (hopefully before it reacts/damages stuff) and converts it into fat (with some nasty waste chemicals). Fructose is handled just like alcohol by the body.

Alcohol is a little worse than fructose because it uncontrollably zips through cell membranes and uncontrollably reacts/damages stuff everywhere instead of just reacting with stuff in the blood. The liver tries to convert it into fat ASAP to prevent it from reacting with something.

Life is the process of self sustaining and self generation action. On the molecular level of your body, fructose and alcohol are anti-life.

Edit: The reason why processed food manufacturers use HFCS instead of plain CS is that per-calorie, HFCS tastes sweater than CS. So they can make their product have fewer calories using HFCS than CS, given some human tasted sweetness. And the reason why HFCS is used instead of sucrose is due to the corn farming subsidies (IMO not that sucrose is any better than HFCS). Most people will choose the lower calorie product that has the same sweatness, not caring whether the sweetness source is fructose or glucose.
(Edited by Dean Michael Gores on 3/22, 7:13pm)

Post 15

Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 2:48am

I like using stevia in my coffe/tea has anyone heard anything bad about it?
I thought I would try it over artificial sweetners as it is a plant "natural " sweetner. As far as food goes I pretty much stick to a whole foods/diabetic diet (cheating with a higher steak/fish/chicken content). I mean who the heck can eat a steak that is only the size of the palm of my hand!!

Post 16

Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 7:24am

Bill,

Much more acid-forming are foods high in sulfur-containing amino acids, such as cheese, meat, fish, eggs and whey protein.

While I agree with your excellent point regarding the balance of the whole diet overriding the importance of any single food choice (acid foods are okay if balanced out by alkaline foods), it's important not to mischaracterize the truth of the matter regarding which foods are the most acid-forming. Here's a rough, ordinal sketch of some acid foods:

Acid Foods (100-gram portions)

>28.0
...........................................................................................................................................................processed cheese

>19.0
.......................................................................................................................................hard cheese

>12.0
.....................................................................................................................brown rice

>10.0
...................................................................................................rolled oats

>9.0
.......................................................................................turkey

>8.0
...............................................................cottage cheese
......................................................eggs

>7.0
.............................................pork
.....................................beef
..............................cod

> 0.5
whole milk

Sources
A proximate source: Cordain's The Paleo Diet (revised) book, Appendix A, p 213
An ultimate source: Remer T., Manz F. Potential renal acid load of foods and its influence on urine pH. J Am Diet Assoc 1995;95;791-797

Upshot
The upshot is that at least some fish and some meats (and even cottage cheese) are less in acid load than rolled oats and brown rice. If, for instance, you want to balance out the acid load of 100-g of brown rice you would need a certain amount of alkaline food for that, but if you wanted to balance out the acid load of 100-g of, say, pork, then you would need less alkaline food to do that. It's an important distinction so I just created a tool I call The Cauliflower Index (Tm; all rights reserved, 2013):

To balance out the acid load of 100-g of brown rice (12.5), you could use some cauliflower (-4.0). Every 25 grams of cauliflower equals (-1.0) so, in order to balance out an acid load of 12.5, you would need 12.5 of these 25-g portions of cauliflower [12.5 x 25 = 312.5 grams of cauliflower]. On the Cauliflower Index, brown rice scores a 312, but pork (7.9) only scores a 197 [7.9 x 25 = 197.5].

Explanation for the creation of a new index for evaluating food
I chose cauliflower for 2 reasons:
-cauliflower's number is even (-4.0 per 100-g portion), which makes it easy to calculate
-cauliflower is roughly mid-range for fruits and veggies in general, which makes it relevant to at least a rough extrapolation to the other fruits and veggies

If, for instance, 50 grams of cauliflower were needed to balance out the acid load of a given food, then it is likely that 50 grams of any kind of heterogenous mix of other fruits and veggies will suffice to do the same job.

:-)

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/23, 10:21am)

Post 17

Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 10:03am

Dean,

Jules: AFAIK, whether the fructose and glucose are paired into sucrose doesn't matter ...

Here are conflicting resources for information on the subject:

RoR
Is fructose bad?

Bad Ad: High-Fructose Corn Syrup vs. Cane Sugar? [Directly addresses the question of fructose "paired into sucrose"]

PubMed
Dietary sugar and artificial sweetener intake and chronic kidney disease: a review.

Fructose: It's "Alcohol Without the Buzz".

Sucrose, high-fructose corn syrup, and fructose, their metabolism and potential health effects: what do we really know?

Challenging the fructose hypothesis: new perspectives on fructose consumption and metabolism.

As you can see from the first 2 links, a limit on fructose might be healthy. A ballpark figure for an upper limit on daily intake of grams of fructose might be something close to a third of your body weight in pounds. If you are 120-lbs, then 40 grams might be fine. If you are 180-lbs, then 60 grams might be fine. If you are 240-lbs, then 80 grams might be fine.

Ed

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 3/23, 10:07am)

Post 18

Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 10:18am

Jules,

According to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Stevia -- along with 6 other nonnutritive sweeteners (NNS's) -- has been "determined to be safe." (1)

Ed

Reference:
(1) Position of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: use of nutritive and nonnutritive sweeteners. [ abstract ]

Seven NNS are approved for use in the United States: acesulfame K, aspartame, luo han guo fruit extract, neotame, saccharin, stevia, and sucralose. They have different functional properties that may affect perceived taste or use in different food applications. All NNS approved for use in the United States are determined to be safe.

Post 19

Saturday, March 23, 2013 - 5:53pm