Toxic Reproductive Organs?
I was listening to Doug McGuff's interview with David Duke (sorry, you'll have to go to the LLVLC blog for your link), and he mentions at one point why grains are so toxic. You see the seed part is the reproductive organ that the plant wants to protect itself from being eaten.
Fair enough. But let's list other "reproductive organs" humans eat:
- Seeds
- Nuts
- Tubers
- Rhizomes
- Legumes (pod seeds)
- Fruits (berries, melons, etc. included)
- Eggs
- The "whole" animal
Need I rinse and repeat? Yes, all but two of those are vegetation, but I mean we could keep the gurus busy for a goodly long time asking just the difference between this "grain" or that "grain". Even foliage distinctions aren't consistent as to equate corn with a grass like wheat is baseless. The truth of the matter is, that unless one truly believes humans are/were obligate carnivores, our species has survived consuming the reproductive organs, especially of vegetation, because that is where the nutrition is!!
If you look at everything bad that can be said about grains, truth be told, you could say the same about, say, walnuts. Lectins, phytates, omega six fats, ... the list goes on. Peanuts/butter used to be an Atkins special ... until paleo came along and demonized the legume. Soy was a staple too ... a few still eat some soy in secret corners. Black soy beans are a low carbers dream to have "beans" ... I'd never heard of them before someone suggested them in, where else, a low carb forum. Flax, a low carb staple, must be ground to even be digested such as it even can be.
This is but one of the seemingly arbitrary distinctions made regarding foods that puzzle me. All of the above except 8 contain some sorts of protective "antinutrients", and yet ALL are sources of high quality nutrition. That grains have been turned to dust, combined with sugar and or fat into highly processed crap, is no more a reflection on those grains themselves than spiked eggnog is a proper reflection on eggs.
This is but one of the seemingly arbitrary distinctions made regarding foods that puzzle me. All of the above except 8 contain some sorts of protective "antinutrients", and yet ALL are sources of high quality nutrition. That grains have been turned to dust, combined with sugar and or fat into highly processed crap, is no more a reflection on those grains themselves than spiked eggnog is a proper reflection on eggs.
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My weight is dropping slowly. Winter is here and while i feel a vague stiffness in some joints I haven't needed pain medication (with the exception of one or two nights after rough days - and I used to take a LOT, daily, in the winter)
So, for me right now it's low carb, no (well, very little) grains and I admit higher fats than I ever imagined I'd eat, but so far so good. No hunger, weight dropping, pain relief. Am I one of Skinner's Pigeons? Possibly, but for now I've no intention of experimenting to find out. I'll leave that for when and if I become dissatisfied.
Meanwhile, this blog really helps keep me from reading too much too seriously, bashing my head against stone walls and screaming "WHAT THE %^*#!?"
Still struggling with the damned eczema though. ;)
As a person having eczema and other allergies among aliments I manage with a life-style(the same is true for my husband and son), I must say it could be tricky even with avoiding gluten, however in my case LC made big difference, but I already was taking care about other things that may trigger flares.Fortunately I live in a sunny climate. Many people with eczema, psoriasis or other dermatitis have harder time during dark time of the year. Thous with allergies often are sensitive to foods like oranges, strawberries, spices, especially hot foods, chocolate,cocoa,smoked meat or fish. Alcohol is problematic, when I have to take any meds like antibiotics or painkillers,aspirin, whatever, usually eczema gets worse. You have to be careful not to wash with soap area of your skin prone to eczema. I am afraid it sounds overwhelming, but it is not necessary that all factors affect you, it is important to figure out own triggers. Alcohol makes matters worse almost for everyone with eczema. Vitamin D2 could be helpful, magnesium supplements are better not to be forgotten.
Certain "anti nutrients" have been found to be beneficial chelators of certain toxins and even protect against cancer. Legumes are consistently correlated with great health in studies. Same with oats, which have been a beneficial addition of my diet in the last few months after I ditched my phytic phobia.
"The "grains don't want to be eaten" argument is even more stupid..."
It's without a doubt one of the dumbest rationales for not eating something there is. Nothing wants to be eaten except for parasites. Some plants have lectins (easily removed through soaking/cooking). Animals have teeth, horns, and claws and I'm fairly sure do not want to be killed and eaten either.
Also, I doubt he meant "toxic".
I think an error of mainstream Paleo is the idea that you can draw a bright line distinction between a list of approved “Paleo” foods and forbidden “Neolithic” foods. As Mat Lalonde frequently notes, foods exist on a spectrum and that spectrum may vary between and among populations and individuals.
I would encourage anyone to listen to this podcast and/or read the transcript. It is an interview between Chris Kresser and Mat Lalonde.
http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-the-paleo-diet-with-mat-lalonde
I know some of the positions put forth by Mat are not what you see advocated on other “Paleo” websites. But I hope it is where “Paleo” is heading. At least, if Paleo wants to survive long term, I think it is where it needs to go.
To me the value of Paleo is not in trying to recreate what cave people ate. Rather, it is in understanding that our evolutionary history forms a framework within which we can more fully understand our diet. However, individual recommendations are going to depend on how any given food is prepared (e.g., fermented, processed, raw, cooked, etc.), who is eating that food (e.g., genetic adaptations, epigenetics, gut health, metabolic health, etc.), resources available (e.g., time, money) and an individual’s goals (athletic performance, weight loss, general health, longevity, etc.) . Again, I understand that may not be what the mainstream thinks of when they hear Paleo, but that doesn’t invalidate the premise that evolution can be a powerful tool in guiding some dietary choices. Actually, I don’t care whether that idea is called “Paleo,” “Evolutionary,” “Ancestral” or something else. I don’t make any money off of it. I’m just interested in seeing the general concept (as I’ve described) receive greater public acceptance and it would be a shame to see the ideas be discarded.
Well some fruit does - so that the seeds are transported and distributed via an animal's feces. Apparently you get excellent tomatos at the sewage plant.
I'll think of the sitting business the next time I eat a fig. I love them and think fig trees are beautiful, but I don't think that stuff like that is allowed in NYC.
In truth, I don't know what my food "thinks" about being eaten. This reminds me of Dan Matesz referring to animal insemination as rape, and calves as "children."
Stupid comments not going through.
Also test.
Evolutionary eating is a good thing, IMO. Thing is the original concept, particularly paleo, appears to have been abducted by agenda-driven hacks who pick and choose data to support their programs.
How come Rocky Mountain Oysters and/or Prairie Oysters never made the list?
Then the argument gets even dumber when they reply with "If something has to be cooked or soaked to make it safe then it probably should not be eaten by humans" (you'd be surprised how many times I've actually heard this argument against legumes and grains, probably from someone sitting in front of their computer with a filtered coffee with coconut oil).
My problem with the inference is, we have no idea whether they were free of disease. Most of our Paleo ancestors likely never lived past age 35. How could they have developed cancer? And how would we know of any Paleo babies died of childhood cancers?
C'mon.
Nor can we say definitively what they ate or didn't eat and in what proportions.
There's so much of that around. A few bloggers repeat something a few times and it's just considered fact without further investigation.
"The inuit were free from disease"
"grains made us fat and short"
"We only evoled eating berries a few months a year to fatten up for the winter"
"The only reason people think saturated fat is bad is because of keyes and his cherry picked 7 country study"
"Large fluffly ldl is non athrogenic"
"Canola oil cause heart disease"
"traditional okinawans ate a lot of fat and pork"
"low cholesterol kills"
"the governments low fat advice made us fat and sick"
etc
I remember when I first found the LC community back in 2009 people used to say -- somewhat misquoting Taubes -- that insulin was required to put fat into fat cells. This did not jibe with what I had learned in college so I did several searches trying to find out if I had missed something or this was new information since last I'd studied the topic. I came up with many hits at the time ... all eventually tracing back to Gary Taubes' statements that you couldn't store body fat without insulin.
It's a combination of the first statement made w/o substantiation (he cherrypicks Cahill) and circle-jerk referencing.
LC is just an alternative to the hyper low-fat crowd from the 90s who thought eating what was basically raw table sugar was fine just as long as it didn't have fat in it.
Check out Pritikin, Eat for Life, pretty much any LF plan. Raw table sugar is not on the menu.
Oh, of course not. That was a bit of sarcastic hyperbole on my part.
Taking out the sarcasm, what I meant was there was a stage where it went from a sensible plan to a dogma. Highly-processed Snackwell's, flours ground so fine they might as well be sugar and everything containing extreme amounts of refined carbs and AS were fine juuuust as long as they're "low/no fat". I remember eating a ton of Angel Food Cake topped with FF Coolwhip. If I bake my donuts instead of deep-frying, sure they're better! That sort of thing.
LC was probably well-intentioned when it started just as LF was; targeting the bad stuff but eventually expanding to the entire macro-nutrient.
"A scientist has revealed that the brain size of modern humans has decreased." It is not an attempt to put down modern humans.
"Lahr thinks part of the answer must lie in the sheer outlay of energy required to maintain large brains — in humans it accounts for about a quarter of all the energy used by the body.
“We may have smaller brains than early humans but that does not mean we are less intelligent,” she added."
IMHO this is a mis-attribution: what's going on is a SHARED preference for easy answers and low quality proof.
There's nothing wrong with many of those statements as IDEAS. Whether the ideas come out of folk understanding of darwinism, or drop out of a drug trip or a random number generator hooked up to a number-to-character translator or reductionist considerations - Where the proponents and fans go wrong is NOT DEMANDING HIGH QUALITY PROOF FOR THE IDEA.
The ideas have a patina of sciencey scientismal scientification and skepticism without doing the ONE CRUCIAL STEP that differentiates science and skepticism as intellectual endeavours: TEST YOUR IDEAS.
"low carbers are repeating what caused LF diets to fail them ...."
Yup. Only thing that has changed is the Big Bad Macronutrient. First it was fat, now it's carbs, and I'm guessing the next in line is protein if ol' Moore is any indicator.
@Sanjeev, when I saw the word "scientismal" I thought of this: "sciendismal."
@lian, "We only evoled eating berries a few months a year to fatten up for the winter" -- one of my all time faves. Denise Minger did a hugely entertaining smackdown of this. She unearthed gobs of evidence about huge, humongous wild fruits:
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/
Not to mention that Paleo peeps undoubtedly were smart enough to dry fruits. Yummy & sweet!
Now individuals try to figure out how to live life enjoying better health and avoiding illnesses associated with downside of our civilization. Many of us want too much like completely unnecessarily look of a bodybuilder at any age, or middle-aged females aiming for "sexy ripped" look.
EVERY one of those claims is backed by research published in major peer-reviewed scientific journals.
Perhaps you prefer the "independent" advice of the Academy of Dietetics and Nutrition (formerly the American Dietetics Association)? They are funded almost entirely by the processed foods industry including: Kellog's, Coca Cola, Hershey, Pepsico, General Mills and the national Dairy Council.
http://www.eatright.org/corporatesponsors/
try reading the bibliography of any paleo nutrition paper published by Brand-Miller, Cordain, O'Dea, Eaton, etc. You will get all the references you want.
For someone who spends so much effort denigrating others you are amazingly ignorant of the scientific literature.
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