Why "primal" and not 19th century? page 8

[Cryptocode]

My recent ancestors lived into their 90s in great numbers, prehistoric man lived longer than that??

I don't know, haven't read any facts or numbers on it. My great-granparents lived to be over 110. Grok's genes (and ours) are programmed to live to 150. Against that 90 is not so great but it really depends on your health. As long as i'm in good health, 150 is OK. Grok had a really high accident rate.

[Dulcimina]

I actually pretty much agree with the OP and pretty much ask myself, "How did Grandma do this?" rather than, "How did Grok do this?"

Factory chickens pretty much became common in the 1950s.
Factory pork and beef in the 1970s.
1955, Ray Kroc buys McD and in 1958 McD sold its 100 millionth burger (per the McD website).
GMO rice, corn, and wheat - the 1980s was the beginning.

Anyway, that's my take. So, I'm happy to aim at a 1940s and 50s diet.

I agree with Joanie's take. I grew up in Jamaica in the 70s/80s. I remember every now and again, the schools would hand out bulgur, milk powder and other staples. They never actually sent us instructions for the bulgur. I didn't even know it was wheat until recently, so my family never ate that.

We ate some organic, pastured meat because that's how a lot of people raised animals then. At different times, we had goats, chickens and a pig. When we bought meat, we couldn't always afford the best part of the animal. So those times when we didn't have our own chickens, we might eat curried chicken backs, or the soup might have chicken feet and a lot of pumpkin to stretch it. It was pretty common to have greens with salted codfish for breakfast. Grains were just an option among many. So a breakfast porridge might be oats or cornmeal, but could also be green bananas. Dinner starches might be rice or wheat flour dumplings. Or they could be breadfruit, potatoes, cassava, sweet potatoes, yams (Jamaican), green bananas again, plantains, dasheens, or coco.

I drank my fair share of kool aid. But also carrot or soursop juice. And hot chocolate? Talk about unprocessed. Chances were my parents knew who had dried, roasted, pounded and formed cacao beans into little cylinders that would be grated into the hot water/milk to make a cocoa with particles on the bottom and oil floating on the top.

A lot of sweet treats were either seasonal - think Christmas cakes and Easter buns- or minimally processed like coconut drops and tamarind balls; or naturally gluten free or easy to make gf, like sweet potato or cassava pone.

Those, not burgers, pizza or mac and cheese, are my comfort foods. So when I struggle with primal, I try to ensure that I do two things: 1) gravitate towards my culture's traditional way of eating and 2) avoid poisonous things.

[Omni]

Humans aren't genetically static, either.

Genetics 101: The bearer of the suspect gene in question must die before breeding to ensure the gene is not passed on to subsequent generations.
Most of the chronic diseases that we discuss here do not debilitate the individual until middle age, giving plenty of opportunity for breeding.

As for your baseless statement, if it had some merit, then there would be no Coeliac disease in the Middle east as this is where wheat has been consumed for the longest time.

The prevalence rates of celiac disease in North Africa and the Middle East are now thought to be similar to those of Western countries.

Celiac Disease

Look at that same as the rest of the world, no tangible evolution to gluten tolerence over 10,000 years of agriculture.

[jammies]

Natural selection has been weakened to the point of inconsequence with regards to modern humans. There's no significant genetic change taking place at the species level, despite your misleading attempt to imply that there is.

This is not technically correct. Evolution is absolutely occurring in humans. And natural selection is going on as well. It occurs way too slowly for any era of humans to be aware of it. Plus, natural selection often occurs in the midst of very large die-off times. For example, there are humans all over the world that are genetically resistant to certain viral infections. You can't see that they are genetically different just looking at them, but if there were a mass die-off from a viral outbreak, these people would survive and have more progeny.

[breadsauce]

I've recently been having trouble posting on here asking for advice because, while I usually get some good advice, I also get four or five people arguing that what I'm doing is ridiculous and that they have a better opinion than mine because they read such and such study or they disagree with whomever and that I shouldn't be doing what I'm doing because I should be doing something else.

Basically making me feel bad for trying to find a way of eating that can help me to be binge free, binge eating being something I've struggled with for 7+ years. The reason I try so many things, following the way my body feels as a guide, is because obviously what I've been doing hasn't been working in the past. Sometimes the way I feel is more important to me than what the studies say or what this or that book says, or what some other person has found to work for them.

I've found another forum where people tend to be much for helpful and, if they have another opinion, it's given very tastefully. I still visit this forum because I do find interesting information and I like hearing what's working for other people.

I would love to know what the other forum is so I can join it! Thanks..

[RitaRose]

And how have you successfully willed yourself or your progeny to evolve lately?

Okay, that had me snort-laughing.

In an evolved kind of way, of course.