Hey, we don't have to show off but it's fun! But seriously, there is no physiological need for carbohydrate. Fat meat and water will sustain a man (or woman) in perfect health indefinitely. There are two things we must be aware of though, we must not cook the meat too much and we must eat enough fat. Otherwise, any meat will do including organs and marrow but I prefer beef muscle meat, especially rib steak.

If you want more information, check out Charles' forum and blog here:
http://forum.zeroinginonhealth.com/

I believe there is enough evidence however I agree that the research is thin, at best. We can find all the evidence we need in just three books: Taubes' GCBC, Stefansson's Not By Bread Alone, and Price's Nutrition and Physical Degeneration.

I think groups of humans hunted groups of animals of the same species. Thus, the knowledge needed to pass on to our descendants is simple and can be taught in deed rather than in words or ideas.

No need for organs. Muscle meat and fat is just fine. Pemmican is dried and pounded muscle meat mixed with rendered fat and it is said to be the perfect food in that it can sustain a man in perfect health indefinitely. We can read all about pemmican in Not By Bread Alone by Stefansson.

You're selling this book hard, Martin! I think I hadn't even heard of it until a couple weeks ago. I found "Adventures in Diet" to be a fabulous read... maybe I'll check this out.

I tried to read "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" online, but I hate reading long stuff online and the style was not nearly as readable as Stefansson.

Seems like spam, is ignoring the needs and experiences of other people a consequence of eating only meat? Price and Stephenson are as proper science as Piaget was: no control groups, no peer reviewed clinical data, no blood samples, no taking into account individual differences a thing for indiana jones like adventorous exaggeration to get funds. And until I read someone claiming that Taubes can be wrong and is wrong and aproximative in many things he says (he made a food of himself on television debating exercising with exercise physiologists) just like all the authors are, I won't easily get out of my mind that he is a skinny fat, overweight and unhealthy looking wannabe guru. Seriously I'm also tired of being told what to do with my health by people that look so terrible that I would rather inject sucrose in my veins than to look even remotely like they do. At least in the Atkins forums I see a lot of fit, healthy looking, attractive people but all the other extremes based on pure ideology so far have produced people with a pot gut, poor muscular tone, confused emaciated faces and poor skin complexion.

It wasn't just Stephenson, it was the entire Inuit people. So I concede those who eat only meat, if it has sufficient fat, and is not overcooked, is an entirely healthy diet. I prefer to add other foods myself (Groves-Dr K), but I concede those who prefer only meat and know what they are doing appear to be very healthy.

I thought my post was confusing.

What I meant to say was that the physiology of mammals are pretty much alike across species and that the knowledge of this is easily transmitted from one generation to the next.

Martin, thanks for the link to the zero carb forum. Some of the people over there look so healthy.

Of course he could be wrong ! In fact he is only asking the scientific community to properly test the carbohydrate hypothesis. Also, our current "conventional wisdom" is more dogma than science ! I would not wish for low-carb to follow the same route and become dogma too. I want real science. I want double blind controlled experiments, just like Taubes is asking !

Patrick

No we cannot! This was brought up in another thread. As of right now, the CHEAPEST version you can get used is $100. So if you own it, you now have a collectible unless they decide to reprint it.

And a search of all library systems in Eastern MA does not yield this book.

The Philadelphia public library has "The Fat of the Land," that's the same book, right? I can't tell if it's available for checkout or not - it may be for reference only. They also have "My Life with the Eskimo" under the same status. I have the privilege of access to the University of Pennsylvania library and they have "My Life with the Eskimo" but NOT the other one!

There are already metabolic ward studies comparing low carb diets to low fat diets and finding no difference in weight loss or other parameters. The problem is that the low-carb people must first admit low-carb is not a panacea for everyone and higher-carb work for many. Admitting this would finally emphasize the fact (as Atkins did) that low-carb are more effective or needed only for those people who have clear insulin and blood sugar issues causing various problems.

On a high-carb diet I felt terrible, had cravings but the less I weight the fatter yet more skinny I looked, it was very weird I was losing whatever little body shape I had while not looking any leaner just flabby and wasted. On a low-carb diet even when I weight more than I should, I look lean, firm and shaped. What's the difference between me and the guy who has a great body while eating a low-fat and high-carb diet? The difference is that his blood sugar is 120 one and two hours after eating regardless of whether it was a bowl of sugar. Mine is 200 one hour after eating some carby and 50 one hour later. Believe it or not there are thousands of people out there who can eat plain sugar without ill effect and even sweets and pure sugar affects their blood sugar just like a steak with broccoli would: there's no spike, no lows, no fluctuation, no going up and down.

I have read that the American Diabetic Association guidelines to define diabetes are outdated and plain wrong. They wait for diabetic complication like sugar in the urine, decrease pancreatic enzyme or high fasting blood sugar. On the other hand scientific research has made it clear that fasting glycemia is irrelevant and that an impaired glucose tolerance test is a sign of diabetes. And while ADA insists that a fasting blood glycemia under 100 is perfectly fine, there are evidences that a fasting glycemia above 90 is already a predictor of diabetes in the next five years. Since everyone with insulin resistance, blood sugar fluctuation, reactive hypoglycemia, unstable glycemia will have an impaired glucose tolerance test, I guess we're all diabetic and we don't know it. I read an endocrinologist claim that diabetes can disguise itself brilliantly for a lifetime so that you never ever find out you've have been diabetic your whole existence.

The arbitrary universal carbohydrate hypothesis is plain wrond and has already been tested and disproved by those tests. But if we acknolwedge that the carbohydrate hypothesis must be linked to blood sugar and hence it must be tested on people with blood sugar abnormalities and an history of doing poorly on low-fat diets (and hence accepting that low-carb is not for everyone and that high-carb can still work for a lot of individuals) we could maybe notice that we can't see the fattening effects of an higher-carb and the healing effects of a low-carb unless we test them on insulin impaired bodies.

What would happen is we promoted a theory that strawberries cause bad reactions because we have witnessed their effect on people with an allergy to strawberries? What would happen is we tested them on non-allergic people to find out they have no reaction to them? Basically the same ideological war it's happening in low-carb. The carbohydrate hypothesis applies only to carb intolerant individuals and must be tested on carb intolerant individuals. Ideology doesn't allow low-carb gurus to admit there are a lot of carb tolerant even sugar tolerant individuals out there and hence forbids them from testing the real thing. If we don't want dogmas, we must first get rid of ideologies, for many promoting low-carb, early man nutrition, what is natural versus what is not, claiming to be healthier than the rest of the world population, claiming others could become healthier by adopting the same lifestyle has become nothing but pure ideology.

If there is such a thing as an arbitrary universal carbohydrate hypothesis. I can assure you that it was not formulated by Gary Taubes.

I'm not sure you understand Taubes' carbohydrate hypothesis. He acknowledges that it's not everyone who is affected. It's not an all inclusive theory. Maybe you judged his views after reading peoples comments about it here. But while some tries to use Taubes as a prophet. He himself truly has a proper scientific mind. After reading his book and after reading enough of his comments all over the place on different theories, I know that he is a very open minded person and acknowledges that he could be wrong.

There is one thing IMHO that might lead your thought process astray Dorian. You think all this has been properly tested when in fact it has not.


It is my understanding that all those studies, all the ones I could find anyway, did not even include any low-carb diet components at all. They say they are comparing low-carb, but they still give people a diet with 25% calories coming from carbs. And 25% carbs is the lowest I could find, some of them claim 40% is low-carb. They make me smile at their bias.

Here is one that actually tested a low-carb diet and even here it's 12% carbs. It's still a bit high IMHO.

http://nmsociety.org/App_Themes/Ima...2009%5B1%5D.pdf

Here you will find other unbiased experiments and studies on the subject.

http://nmsociety.org/LowCarbResearch.aspx


I'm with you on that one and I agree with much of your post.

Would you agree that in order for anyone to become truly obese, like I was at 337, you have to consume an excess of carbs and be someone who is predisposed of being affected by it ? And that anyone not predisposed to be affected by an excess of carbs, like my very thin girlfriend, could not in fact become morbidly obese? Their body would regulate itself properly before such an excess of fat accumulation could take place.

Patrick