If it was lower GI, it wouldn't cause such a huge blood sugar rise, especially since it's got alot of fat with it.

I must have imagined the entire chapter devoted to using supplements in DANDR. Oh and the 13 pages of supplements on the Atkins webpage to purchase.

But wait. I think perhaps the problem here is my wording. Let's try this. "Many Atkins dieters need supplements, including myself..."

During induction especially, when you can have limited vegtables, I found it hard to function w/o supplements (leg cramps, low potassium, and fatigue)

There are no nutritional definciency in a low carb diet that requires the use if supplements. Atkins was very clear on this point. The idea behind supplementation is that the modern diet is deficient in nutrients because of intensive agriculture that uses chemical fertilizers and pesticides and intensive animal husbandry methods that use nutrient-deficient feed grains and nutrient-wasting chemicals. We drink treated, purified water that lacks the minerals we would get if we drank directly from limestone springs the way our paleolithic ancestors did. Those paleolithic ancestors, by the way, ate a lot of things, both animal and vegetable, that we would not even recognize as food that provided them with nutrients our current animal and vegetable sources lack. So the need for supplementation has nothing to do with any deficiencies particular to low carb diets, and everything to do with deficiencies in the modern diet in general.

"I no longer consider that a person following a theoretically optimal, even "perfect" diet could live as long or as healthfully as he could were he take nutritional supplements." -Atkins

You are right, unless living long and healthfully as you can is in your low carb plan, then there's no need to take them.

Secondly. I find this so interesting. Previously, in this same thread, so many people said there's NO way my information I provided that stated paleo people ate 65% fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, honey, was accurate. That, quite the opposite, they ate almost ALL fat and protein and someone else said more like 65% was protein/fat. Yet, now for the sake of argument, suddenly paleo people would have consumed PLENTY of the fruits, veggies, nuts and legumes to have met our nutritional needs.

You don't need to eat a mostly plant based diet to get thenutrients you need. They ate ENOUGH veggies and fuits to get what they needed, but didn't eat the huge amounts of carbs that most people eat now.

LOL My thoughts exactly!

Perhaps, but not neccessarily. You didn't take into consideration seasonal and climatic changes. For instance, in places were there were very cold winters, paleo people would not have access to fresh fruit and vegetables in the winter months. IMO that is when they depended upon fat for their energy and when it was most important. During the milder months of spring and summer, they probably relied more on fruits and vegetables that were easily obtainable. It is also probable that they would hunt in the summer as well as gather and make pemiken in the fall as well as store seeds, gourd and tuber type vegetables such as squash and potatoes to eat in the winter months. Gourds and tubers of course have higher amounts of carbs than berries for example. Just as paleos needed stored fat for energy, they also needed the stored energy in some plants such as the ones I mentioned. I still maintain that the biggest difference between paleos and modern humans is that we now refine the nutrients out of our food and thus are really starving our bodies. There are so little nutrients in refined processed foods, that we are always hungry and thus eat more and get fatter. Also, we tend to overload our stomachs in 3 big meals rather than graze as hunter-gatherers did. So we get glycemic overload or more accurately a glycemic roller coaster ride.

Physical activity all day long uses up the excess glucose from eating starches and sugars. Most of us simply don't have the sort of life style any longer that makes that healthy. Now, if you have to wash your clothes by hand, drag a plow behind a horse you can probably be very healthy eating lots of potatoes and flours and so on. But sitting behind a desk all day... nope.

Therein you described the basics of what is required to be healthy. Eat less, do more. How long are we going to work on trying to make our food behave? Its a no brainer, obviously overly processed, sugar laden foods and to boot, mass quanities of it, while we do very little energy burning at the same time, is BAD. But does that make a potato a lil brown ball of toxin?
I think not.

I think ancient man was doing fairly well for himself, not because of what they ate, but because of how little they thought about it. There's a book that's worth writing and selling. lol

Well, considering that paleo man COULDN'T eat potatoes or grains because they can't be eaten raw, I doubt they were eating all those carbs to begin with.
People of farming cultures have been shown to die at a younger age because of diseases like heart disease and diabetes than cultures that eat maily meat and fat.

I agree. Isn't this what most doctors and nutritionists have been saying all along---eat a balanced diet and exercise?

While food processing is one big difference between modern humans and ancient humans, another big difference is TV and magazine ads encouraging us to eat chips, soft drinks, candy and other products high in calories, processed sugars and with little or no nutritional value---not to mention the snack bar ads at the movie theaters! When was the last time anyone saw an ad for broccoli or cauliflower?

Well I am confused about several things. First of all the term "paleo" which I myself used simply because it has been a popular "catch-all" term describing prehistoric humans on low carb boards, but which doesn't really explain a lot about just WHEN such people lived (beginning, middle or late paleolithic era). WHERE they lived (northern ice covered land masses or milder southern climate regions), much less how they lived and whether they were primarily hunters or hunter-gatherers or beginning subsistance farming. I mean it is not like there are EXACT cutoff dates as humans developed and their lifestyle changed.

To think that all the modern humans who lived approximately ten to forty thousand years ago and lived in various parts of the world with various climates ate exactly the same things or even had identical lifestyles is ridiculous. You can't lump humans who lived thousands of years apart into one convenient bunch and say that all ate a "paleo diet" whatever the heck that is. The ancestors of Eskimos did not eat the same things as the ancestors of modern Africans. What they ate depended mostly on the latitude they lived in and rainfall which affected both flora and fauna. For instance, people in Siberia got more of their calories from animal food but in some parts of Africa, people ate the bulk of their food as plant carbohydrates and only a small amount of animal protein.

That being said, hominids have known and used fire since the earliest days of modern human (homo sapiens) existence if not before. So are you really talking about modern humans or early humans such as homo erectus or austaliopithicas when you say "paleo man" didn't cook (which I assume you mean hadn't discovered fire)?

And while I am at it, I'd like to ask if the so-called no-cooking way of eating is so great, do you eat all your food, including meat, raw? And if not, why not?

Also, I would like to add that the meat we find in our supermarkets today wouldn't be recognizable to any prehistoric human. I bought some chicken breasts the other day that were Dolly Parton look alikes . My husband said it was obvious those chickens were on steroids. I doubt that, but they sure were eating a lot of pumped up CARBS. We rarely can find range chickens or even beef or pork. Our meat nowdays has all kinds of chemicals either put into the animals directly or though their feed. So trying to compare modern day diets to prehistoric diets is silly.

In addition, do the small amount of prehistoric human fossils in existence REALLY show how long these people lived in a wide cross section as groups and compared to all other human fossils?

I still maintain the best thing we can learn from prehistoric humans is to keep physically active as much as possible, eat as little processed food as possible and stay away from salt and refined sugar.

I am astounded I'm still alive! I grew up VERY rural, and "poor." (by today's standards) We basically ate a near vegatarian diet because meat sources were more expensive, beans, potatoes and bread being the main course of most meals, except when it was harvest time in the garden. One of my favorite snacks was RAW potatoes. Anytime I was peeling them, I ate at least one by the time I was done. My kids now stand around asking for a slice when I am peeling them. We grew up in a house that had a wheat field behind it. It provided two wonderful things, snacks and fun. Near harvest time, we'd pick the kernals by the handfuls and chew on them like chewing gum. Once the wheat was harvested, we used the leftover stems to build playhouses Good memories. I was healthy as heck as a kid.


And the most healthy culture currently are the Mediterranean people. Early man had life expectancy of about 35-40 and I realize that they say about 80% of people died from disease, not because of what they ate. Or... maybe it was?? These people ate to live. Whatever they could. Does this mean, IF it was mostly meat and fat, that these items aren't the best protection from diseases then? Hmmm, so much to think about.

Lastly, its apparent you've never worked on a farm if you think the farming culture is less healthy and especially early farming culture. Hard work, long hours, plenty of energy spent and plenty of exercise.

Thanks for your comments. I remember eating raw potato slices too when I was a kid. Perhaps the poster was referring to the fact that potatoes are a part of the Deadly Nightshade family of plants which are poisonous. The leaves and stems of the potato plant are what is poisonous, not the tuber itself. It is also true that grain can be eaten raw. There is even a mention of that in the Bible when Jesus was walking through the field of grain and ate it . Also remember all the pictures of little boys chewing on a stem of wheat? Whether we eat things raw or not is a matter of taste and in this day and age, a matter of sanitation---esp. with meat. So whether prehistoric humans ate a raw diet or roasted things over a fire is really a moot point.

The list I just checked shows a baked potato with a GI of 85, while sucrose (tabl;e sugar, the major carb component of a candy bar) is 65. So I was wrong about the potato being lower GI, that and the larger portion would make it a double whammy.

On the subject of supplements, sure Atkins sells a long list of nutritional supplements. That is how they are making money. Nothing wrong with that, just don't trot that out as proof that we must have supplements to be healthy. Yes Dr. Atkins did advocate certain supplements for certain conditions. Did he know how much longer or healthier we would be if we took these supplements? Did he have any data on that? Or was it just a hunch on his part? I haven't seen many conclusive positive results from studies of supplementation. My guess is, the difference is at best very small and at worst, the supplements may do more harm than good. They certainly do harm to your budget. Is supplementation worth an extra 3 months of life?