Martin -what is your evidence that NTD's are due to low-fat, high-carb diets and not folate? I'd really like to see what you're basing this opinion on please.

Gosh, this is fun!

amanda

Really? I nodded off pages ago. Short attention span ya know

I don't need to assume anything. "It is said" is a manner of speaking. I said it to mean I read it but I don't see the need to refer to the texts. Then I saw no alternative but to point you to the texts because again you got on my case over something I said.

There's an argument that is used all the time by the proponents of the low fat, high carb diet. It goes something like this. Not because a low carb diet improves health parameters on the short term that it is healthy on the long term. You used precisely this argument here in this thread but applied to the zero carb diet. The argument is fallacious. It implies that somehow even though a low carb is good in the short term (just like the low fat, high carb diet is to reduce weight) it's bad on the long term for all kinds of reasons like saturated fat is bad for us, and we need carbs and we don't get enough nutrients, etc. All of these fallacies have been refuted ad nauseam.

If I concede that the Inuit eat fruits in season, it implies that they don't eat it out of season which means they eat an exclusive all meat diet for the rest of the year which is probably 8 or 9 months. Yet they don't develop deficiency of any kind during this period. If I'm not mistaken, deficiencies develop very quickly. Quickly enough that 8 or 9 months on a deficient diet would have a significant effect. This is shown with the semi-starvation study. This refutes the argument that an exclusive all meat diet will at some point cause deficiencies. If it had the potential to do so, it would have done so already.

At this point, we don't have to show that the Inuit ate an all meat diet. Instead, we have to show that an all meat diet causes deficiencies at all. Since there is no evidence of this in any text that I'm aware of, then I can only conclude that an all meat diet doesn't cause deficiencies whatsoever. If anything, an all meat diet reverses deficiencies like scurvy i.e. it cures whatever symptoms and returns a human to good health.

I didn't say that. I said that a folate deficiency is probably caused by a high carb, low fat, restricted calorie diet. The folate/NTD is an association. I made another association by hypothesizing that since the SAD causes so many deficiencies, it might as well cause a folate deficiency thus it might as well be associated with NTD too. There is not a single disease that I'm aware of where the SAD is not involved in some way.

All meat means exclusively meat. Which part of the animal is of no consequence since muscle meat alone is enough. Also, I know of no instance where we ate only the liver or the heart nor that organ meat was the major part of some diet, for example. In all instances, it's either all muscle meat or muscle meat with some organ meat. However it's important to note that there must be enough fat otherwise protein becomes toxic.

Which animal to eat is also of little consequence. Animal flesh would be any ruminants, game meat, fowl, fish, maybe even eggs. It all depends, depended historically, on where we lived and which animals we had access to. I have access to all kinds of meat but I prefer beef. In other words, the Inuit ate the fish and seal and plains Indians ate the buffalo because that's what they had access to.

It says nothing about what's in those animals. But it says that whatever is in them be it fish seal or buffalo is enough.

Your logic here is flawed - I've already stated, quite clearly, that on an all-meat diet it is possible to meet and exceed all nutrient requirements, just as I also noted, care needs to be taken to do that.....if you're not living in or lived within a traditional culture, you're hard pressed to fully grasp the nuanaces of the dietary habits of a population as divrse as the Inuit. I've repeated it many times - the Inuit did not consume only one animal to the exclusion of all others and they did not all have the same dietary patterns, save for, if you look at each, they were all nutrient-dense at the micronutrient level no matter what the macronutrient ratios were!



Deficiency presenting with overt symptoms totally depends on the nutrient in question - one can go years, sometimes as long as a decade, without ever consuming even a hint of vitamin B12.....it's one of the nutrients we store at good levels, so even a long-term deficiency of the nutrient will not present quickly as deficiency - but along the way, yes, by way of lab values, you could pick up declining reserves and/or declining levels that will lead to the point where overt symptoms present - and by that point, it's sometimes irreversible.

But then there are nutrients we are effectively recycling and have metabolic processes to conserve depending on nutritional conditions.....we adapted during feasts and famines Martin, we're quite good at getting by for a good period without dying even in the face of semi-starvation. The folate cycle is a good example.....for the most part, we do need a steady intake of folate to work the folate cycle (which includes B12, B6, choline, betaine and B2 in the mix) to maintain homocysteine levels.....without adequate folate, will we die quickly? Probably not - our homocysteine will rise and in time begin to wreck havoc, but again, over years, not months.....and depending on your genetic profile related to the folate cycle, you could go years or months - it totally depends on your enzyme levels present based on your genetics in this regard.

Deficiency in something like amino acids presents fairly quickly - go months without, oh, lycine and you'll start to present with issues due to protein deficiency. Some nutrients, like vitamin C, tend to be heavily dependent upon context of the diet - and our ability to utilize something like L-dehydroascorbic acid (vitamin C's oxidized form that won't pop on tests for vitamin C content).

So your contention that "This refutes the argument that an exclusive all meat diet will at some point cause deficiencies. If it had the potential to do so, it would have done so already." is wishful thinking at best - you simply are taking that chance, which is fine - it's your body, you do with it what you wish - because there is no hard data supporting your belief that eating just meat and fat is sufficient - there is no population of record that shunned out the organs, eyeballs, reproductive organs, kidneys, liver, etc. -- populations that relied and rely on mostly animals consume the entire animal, not just the muscle and fat.



Again - define an all-meat diet.....what does it contain specifically and what does it exclude, if anything?

Based on the above nonsense, one can only conclude that your concept of Optimal Nutrition must be washing down your evening martinis with bottles of beer.

Bo

I never said nor suggested that only organ meats were consumed - it is the entire animal that is consumed and that includes organ meats, eyeballs, bone marrow, bones in broth, etc.

But here you are contending that one can abandon that tradition and consume only the flesh and fat - tossing aside the organs, brains, bone marrow, bones and such - and be just fine? What population can you point to where this is the way of life? Isn't that sort of like throwing out the yolk in an egg? Why would any population do that when hunting the animal down is reason enough to not discard any edible part?

You seriously need to do some reading - you have no clue about NTD's and are, at worst, speculating rather than actually taking the time to read up and remotely begin to look at the cause-effect of nutrients in the development of NTD's.....it's not the fat content of the diet, nor the carbohydrate per se.....and it certainly isn't, at this point, an association by hypothesis.


Really Martin - go read, then we'll discuss....because you might just be shocked by the prevalence, incidence and populations most likely to be affected....somethign you can't begin to understand unless you've taken the time to read more.

Martin, it's almost as if you're stuck on this idea that you can pick and choose what you prefer and all will be well because any and all animals are comparable at the end of the day.....that if you want to consume some liver, cool - if not, no worries there; if you want to make some bone broth or not, it doesn't matter - the flesh and fat will sustain you in perfect health, with or without the rest of the animal.

Yet, if you look at every last traditional culture out there that relied heavily on animals - it's clear they consumed a variety of animals they had access to, they consumed every last bit of the animal and even went so far as to gouge into the skull to get the brains, break open bones to get the marrow and have ritualistic practices around the consumption of particular parts, like the reproductive system of an animal.

You can't really think (or can you) - that you can somehow extrapolate the generations of experience with a traditional diet, and its nuances, and modify it to simply be reduced to flesh and fat - really no more than eating just ground beef for the rest of your life --- and think that's going to provide all you need nutritionally? Do you really believe that?

Variety is an argument made possible by agriculture and transport. Without agriculture and transport, we eat what's there and sometimes all we eat is buffalo or fish or seal for long periods. If those things were deficient in some essential nutrient, deficiencies would develop quickly enough for those periods to have a significant effect. Since we don't develop deficiencies over any length of time, then we can only conclude that whatever is in those things is enough. The variety argument is refuted.

It's impossible to show that we are omnivores but it is possible to show that we are opportunistic. It's impossible to show that we are omnivores because we would have to show that eating only meat causes deficiencies. All that's left is to show that we are opportunistic. That's easy: We eat what's available.

A case can be made that we are carnivore by simply extrapolating the evidence of carbohydrate effects on humans. More is worse, less is better. Therefore, none is perfect. There is no reason to think otherwise. For instance, we can't extrapolate that more than none is perfect since nobody reacts the same way to the same dose of carbohydrate. For all we know, there could be people out there who react by dying on the spot if they eat just one gram of carbohydrate. The point is that there is no middle ground in favor of carbohydrate. It's either we think it's food then any amount is OK or we think it's poisonous then no amount is ever OK. The evidence weighs heavily against carbohydrate and by extrapolation in favor of an all meat diet.

Quit making baseless allusions to my personality, please. I don't do it to you. Let's keep this civil.

I'd like to know in which way you think it is nonsense. Then maybe I could clarify so that it quits being nonsense to you.

I did define an all meat diet but you disagree. My logic is impeccable if I say so myself. But you disagree. All the nutrients you mentioned, vitamin C, B12, amino acids, they're all in fresh meat. Hardly shows that an all meat diet has the potential to cause deficiencies.