Weekend Link Love
For this 200th(!) edition of Weekend Link Love I thought I’d try a slightly new format. Instead of a hodgepodge collection of links to start the blog post I’m going to break the links out into sections. Don’t worry. I’ll still be linking to and providing commentary on anything and everything I find interesting, but now you’ll know that THE latest, most important and intriguing research that was released in the last week, and THE blog posts everyone is talking about can be found here. It’s your one stop shop for catching up on what’s going on in the world of ancestral health and fitness published every Sunday. Let me know in the comment board if you prefer this little format change. Thanks, everyone!
Research of the Week
Persistence-hunting, water-carrying, tree-climbing hunter-gatherers don’t actually expend more energy than lazy soda-guzzling Westerners, a new study has found, dispelling the popular notion that losing weight is all about burning calories. (Perhaps it’s the soda?)
Dying potato chips red caused test subjects to eat 50% fewer of them.
Average daily hours of television viewed, separated by country. I could excuse the US’ poor showing if it reflected Louie, Breaking Bad, and Game of Thrones marathoning, but I doubt that’s the case.
Interesting Blog Posts
One paleo blogger’s successful battle against high cholesterol (and she managed to avoid statins!).
Human ancestors were nearly all vegetarian, a Scientific American blogger says. What do you say? A $50 gift certificate to PrimalBlueprint.com to the commenter with the best response! (As judged by me and the Worker Bees. This contest ends midnight PDT, July 31.)
Media, Shmedia
Bryan (future Primal doctor) and Tracy (former math teacher, newly-minted MovNat trainer) Barksdale were recently featured in The Daily News out of Galveston, Texas, where they’ve been spreading the ancestral love.
This article on “the caveman diet” in The Vancouver Sun is less impressive, but fairly even-handed. I only counted a couple references to eating grubs, bugs, and rodents. And they didn’t even mention loincloths once.
Everything Else
I’ve talked about wheat germ agglutinin before, but this article really lays into the pernicious wheat lectin. Also: “Pandora’s bread box” is coined, which I think is just fantastic.
Thank heavens the Canadian authorities are finally cracking down on illegal frontyard gardens. Think of the children!
Recipe Corner
- Richard Nikoley’s Fat Bread – it’s not quite like the real thing, but it’s not trying to be.
- Get some beef, some okra, a crock pot? Baby, you got yourself an okra beef stew!
Time Capsule
One year ago (July 29 – August 4)
- Are Traditionally Prepared Grains Healthy? – Find out whether all that fermentation, soaking, and sprouting is even worth the effort.
- Smart Spice: Cumin – Everything you need to know about this pungent spice.
Comment of the Week
I love that research medicine is validating and reinforcing my love for Calvinball.
- Amen, T.D. Next, I hope they confirm the existence of sentient stuffed tigers.
Grab The Primal Blueprint Cookbook Today and Receive Free S&H and a Free Primal Blueprint Poster
Posted By: Mark Sisson
You’ve appealed to my anally retentive side with the partitioned info, and my childish humor with ‘Media Schmedia’. Bravo!
Praising Louie, GoT, Breaking Bad AND making an Arrested Development reference in one article? Just perfect.
Yes! Carl Weathers! Baby, you got yourself a stew!
The article fails in many more ways than this but really all that is needed in response is to say that it’s the paleolithic diet, not the proto-human diet. The ancestors and cousins of our species are hardly the best indicators of what our own species is like.
This is essentially what I was going to say. We should be looking at what our diets were when we stopped evolving, not when we were still in the process. It is also completely unfair to compare humans and monkeys. Sure we are genetically similar, but we have different evolutionary paths. We are also genetically similar to rats, but I certainly don’t want to eat a rat diet!
Yes. As Professor Steve Jones once pointed out we share 50% of our genetic material with a banana.
Genetic, in a sense, is old hat now, anyway:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952313,00.html
The point, as everyone posting here has pointed out, is pretty obvious. It’s irrelevant what non-human creatures live on and it doesn’t become magically relevant somehow just because those creatures are in our family tree.
The argument is so easy not just to question but actually to refute that one wonders why the article’s author bothered with it.
Humans have never stopped evolving. I agree otherwise.
Seems to me that when evolutionary pressures such as availability of food, shelter and presence of predators are removed, true evolution is no longer possible. What we see now is more like random genetic mutations, some of which stick. I believe true human physical evolution hasn’t taken place in millenia…
But rat meat is supposed to be high in testosterone, and we know testosterone builds lean muscle mass.
I got a kick out of durianRider. He censored me just last night on his inflamatory blog about Robb Wolf. I just posted what he censored over on Scientific American so his followers can read what my experiences eating vegan for several years VS primal, like I am now.
Mark has never censored my posts on the rare occasions I’ve disagreed with him.
Well, that worked up my appetite! Time for sliced steak on organic mixed greens topped with my balsamic vinegar and organic olive oil dressing.
Grok on!
… perhaps durianrider shares 95% of his dna with bananas?
just watched a great YT presentation by Lloyd Pye – (of starchild skull fame) and he is presenting excellent discussions that the “missing link” from neanderthal to modern human cannot possiby be just one waiting-to-be-found skeleton – but would have to be 10 to 15 missing links to actually prove darwin’s evolution is functioning as claimed. we are just too damn different in so many physiological ways than these so-called ancestor primates –
i think our “creation” story is waaaay different than we are told or have yet imagined – but for me, however we came to be genetically what we are, we most certainly lived as hunter-gatherers for thousands of generations and were thereby “selected” for the primal diet needed to survive. so, bring on the bacon….
Thanks so much for the love, Mark. I am soooo excited about the cholesterol story. Despite skyrocketing cholesterol numbers and their mantra that I should take statins for the rest of my life I was able to prove that they weren’t necessary.
Another study showed people at 40% less when eating on a red plate. But calories aren’t really the problem, right?
Quote from teh Hazda article “. In fact, the Hadza spend a greater percentage of their daily energy budget on physical activity than Westerners do, which may contribute to the health and vitality evident among older Hadza.”
So how do the americans match the energy expenditure of the Hazda to make up the deficit in physical activity? Chewing? Pressing the buttons on the remote?
The article doesn’t cover that off so leaves a lot out.
I noticed that, too, John. Huh?
i had the same question. do the hazda burn fewer calories when at rest?
those who regularly run, jump and climb will become much more efficient at running, jumping and climbing.
plus, plus-sized americans will burn a couple hundred more calories at rest simply by being heavier.
but still, that shouldn’t be enough difference to explain away hours of daily activity.
How about artificial lighting, and more waking hours.
Question about the CT Heart Scan after reading the 1st link under ‘Interesting blog posts’:
Does anyone know how expensive this scan is? If it’s a better indication of disease than a full panel of lipid tests, why don’t we just skip the lipid panel and have CT scans instead? I assume the price would come down if it became standard procedure.
Mine was $100 out-of-pocket. Yes, that’s right, hospitals do it as a ‘loss leader’. Imagine a population where that would be profitable? A score of 200 warrents a lifestyle change, a 2,000 would indicate bypass surgery.
My Doc got a zero; I got a one. I always like to win, but I’m pleased with my second place!
In response to what did early humans eat..
I also wondered how ofter early humans ate meat as well but then I came up with a few theories. There where billions more animals to eat and kill in those days…think of the buffalo and the dodo bird, easy to kill, easy to catch(with tools), which brings me to my next point, monkeys and apes if they wanted to eat meat more often they would have to start to make tools, and weapons because they aren’t really equipped to hunt other animals as we once were with just there physical abilities. Small things like rodents, bugs, and birds but nothing large enough for the males of the family to bring back for the rest. Meat is the first choice of humans still living a real primal lifestyle if you can’t get meat you eat vegetables and if you’re really struggling you plant wheat and get fat until you have a successful kill, that’s why our bodies don’t store fat when eating just meat, we have no reason to we are we are neither stressed or starving, we are at the top of the food chain, with low body fat and a high meat diet our sex hormones increase because its time to reproduce because times are good, because we are getting what our bodies need.
love this. I am always confused when “militant vegans” suggest we are being morally corrupt by claiming to be the “top of the food chain.”
Also, my kids BBC Planet Earth DVD series shows a group of chimps eating the young of a rival group. Not to say this is frequent, but eating animal flesh is eating animal flesh.
Buffalo easy to kill, easy to catch?? Ever hunted buffalo?
A buffalo jump is a cliff formation which North American Indians historically used in order to hunt and kill plains bison in mass quantities.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_jump
Traditional Native American hunters weren’t rugged individualist (neither were the paleolithic hunter/gatherers, I suspect). They were rugged collectivists.
excellent observation – rugged individualism in our distant past was more often rewarded with a quick death than healthy happy survival. we are addicted to this illusion of individualism and tend to interpret the world and all ancient worlds through this inaccurate filter – we are, by natural selection, collective creatures – and we have forgotten this-
Well said sir, I agreee 100%.
200!!??!! Congrats!!
And THANK YOU!!
I agree – WOW, and thanks!
In response to the vegetarian thing: No, ancestors of humans were nearly all vegetarian. Human ancestors developed a case of bakonbraenitis, which increases the size of your brain but requires large quantities of meat to keep the disease from becoming terminal.
I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect or even assume that some early humans were forced into vegetarian – or even vegan – diets, albeit for short periods. Just as there were some civilizations (the Inuit, for example) who lived entirely off animals and their fat, there were likely those humans who in their travels and migrations found little or no animal life and ate only vegetables.
But this in no way, to me, destroys the premise of the Primal Blueprint. Oh, wait, did I just quote the 89/20 rule?! If you’re a fit Grok traversing the land and find nary a rodent, bison, etc. to devour, you’ll probably make it on nuts and vegetables for a few weeks or even months. Truth be told, I actually can’t digest meat very well, so I don’t eat it, but I’ve managed to build an otherwise primal eating plan around it. Where I have eggs, I imagine this unintentionally meatless Grok probably had insects, which is of course the basis of vegetarians being able to sustain high B12 levels historically (err, now…not so much).
What I think is very unlikely is Grok choosing to eschew meat. I imagine it would be easier for me in the wild to kill a bison than to pick as many nuts as it requires for me to stay a veggie.
I love that cholesterol story. My levels had always been high… when i went in for my annual check the doctor nearly fell off his chair due to the improvement…
the one change= primal
@DanielBl- nice theories
“Were.” Human ancestors WERE vegetarian. Then we grew a bit and learned better
The fellow who wrote the Scientific American article thinks we should eat the diet that resulted in monkeys rather than the one that resulted in big brains.
+1
More work needs to be done with that study about the red potato chips. If I encountered a red potato chip, I would probably stop eating them too. However, I think it might have more to do with encountering something unexpected rather than my subconscious reading a stop sign. They should try the experiment with other colors. Also, they should try the experiment where all of the chips are an unexpected color. Would I eat an entire container of red chips vs. an entire container of blue chips? How about mixed chips?
Great link on the cholesterol article. I really enjoyed that site. Thanks!
One thing that I haven’t seen as a response to the article is that while our ancestors may have been primarily vegetarian, it was the switch to eating cooked vegetables and the addition of meat to our diets that allowed humans to evolve as they did. The additional protein and calories, and the lowered digestive requirements meant that our brains could grow bigger (along with the needed brain capacity to stalk and capture the meat) means smarter humans and babies, which grow into smarter adults.
Okay, even if we were herbivores or frugivores at one time, how could of we tamed fire of made tools doing that? I bet our ancestors were very curious, probably a Smilidon kill was pretty close to their home. So don’t you think that they would of atleast tasted the meat and thought that they could get more energy and think a little better? I don’t mind if we were herbivores at one point(Considering most other apes are herbivores) but I’d rather be a smart, bipedial omnivorous ape then an average, tree-dwelling herbivore.
And just one more thing to point out. Look at Chimpanzee’s, our closest cousin, they are so close to becoming as smart as us; they use tools, have social skills everything that defines us but a few things. They don’t walk upright, they don’t eat as much meat as us, and they can’t communicate with an actual language. All key components we developed after eating meat and taming fire(Oh, that’s another thing!) I think depending on where you or your ancestors come from that’s what you should base your diets off of. Now I’m not saying that you should eat bread because of that, but research the indigenous groups around that area, say the Sami people of Scandanavia(My primary diet, with exception of reindeer) and just learn what they eat. Not everyone is the same so follow your own path and don’t listen to everyone you meet.
If something else had made the kill there may have been little or no meat left. However, what they could do was crack the long-bones to get at the marrow, which is very nutritious.
There’s a woolly mammoth carcase that bears marks suggesting that lions killed it but that humans took the kill off the lions at an early stage:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/17525070
I’ve seen footage of Maasai deliberately hunting in this way — using lions to catch game for them. They keep an eye on the lions and when they kill, drive them off the kill. It’s obviously a dangerous hunting technique that takes a lot of guts, but in face of a group of humans armed with spears it seems lions will back down.
The excellent documentary, In Search of the Perfect Human Diet, covers this issue of humans scavenging the kill of other animals quite well.
One of the excellent points that it makes is that other, stronger hunting animals like lions were not, in fact, able to bite through the skulls of their prey, and so, left that choice food — brain — behind.
Humans, on the other hand, with their tool-making ability were able to come up with tools in order to break through the skulls of the left-behind carcasses of the prey and eat the choice brain portion.
Thinking back to my early life, having had parents from the backwoods of N. Carolina, I recall eating brains and eggs for breakfast sometimes. I think they were pork brains and came in a can way back then.
Psst, Mark, I’m sure the pun was unintended when you talked of “dying” potato chips. Though eating enough of them might make you *die*, the word is “dyeing”.
Congrats on the 200th WLL!
I also caught that but didn’t want to be the Spelling Police.
I missed it, thanks for ‘sharpening’ me up.
FAT Bread (link): Maybe I missed something; however, I could not see where / how to make the coconut butter in the fat bread recipe?
John, the coconut butter you can buy. Artisana makes a product (called coconut butter), as does Nutiva (called coconut manna). You can also use shredded coconut meat, (just introduce it in the beginning and let the eggs do the work, as for the macadamias). However, the desiccation process for shredded coconut meat sweats out a lot of the fat. To equalize with coconut butter, it takes about 8.5 level tablespoons of coconut oil. This is why in my nutritional analysis where I used shredded coconut as surrogate for coconut butter was off (see the update at the end of the post). When I adjust for the more fat in coconut butter, the macro ratio changes to 88% fat instead of 80%, but the micros don’t change much. Still [more] fatty, just as nutritious.
“IF we want to return to our ancestral diets, the ones we ate when most of the features of our guts were evolving, we might reasonably eat what our ancestors spent the most time eating during the largest periods of the evolution of our guts. If that is the case, we need to be eating fruits, nuts, and vegetables—especially fungus-covered tropical leaves.”
No…we want to be eating the diet that enabled humans to evolve large brains, discover fire, and invent the wheel (along with art, music, language, and stories). Therefore, an argument based off any of our ancestors before Homo sapiens is a deliberate misdirection. Additionally, it’s not just about the evolution of the gut in our primate ancestors, but more importantly, the gene regulation that diets influence (and all the new discoveries about our gut microbiota).
We need to see an article titled “Humans Were Nearly All _____________,” not “Human Ancestors Were Nearly All…” well, anything.
The author alluded to this idea in the article and mentioned that further study could convince him. So why this article that doesn’t address the actual question at hand?
I’ll give you several comments: If our ancestors were vegetarian then why are we even here now? How many vegans & vegetarians survived the Ice Ages? NONE.
That’s why all the ancient cave paintings by early man are of bison and the other ANIMALS they revered, respected and subsisted on for food, clothing, tools & implements. Ever notice you don’t ever see or find cave paintings of broccoli carrots & potatoes? Hmmm, why do you suppose that is?? Next chance you get try making a pair of moccasins out of potato skins, see how that works for you.
Dumbasses. People like that writer with such meager brain power must be vegetarian themselves and are proof that ‘education’ does not equal intelligence nor does it confer common sense.
There’s really no need to hate on vegetarians. Some of us are quite bright. I think humans have always, rightfully so, respected the animals they’ve eaten more than the vegetables or the fruit. The only culture that respects some vegetables and fruits the way others respect animals is Jadists. Even omnivores who eat large quantities of meat, I think, at least realize the intense efforts and energy given to the task of raising healthy, nutritious animals. I believe Grok, with necessary hunting and sprinting, etc., to get his food, would have realized that animals for food are much more dear (or deer…haha) than are veggies or fruits simly because they’re that much less reliable. Animals can run away; there’s no hope for the zucchini.
Which is why the plant oftentimes tries to poison you. The animal generally stops trying to kill you when the butchering starts.
Not sure that Rob Dunn (or Scientific American) read his own article.
Complete title fail.
Thanks for including my Okra Beef Stew recipe in your roundup
I love what you are putting out there into the world and I am thrilled to be a part of it.
Grok the vegetarian. He dug up giant carrots on his hunting trips and rode a T-rex to church every Sunday to partake of wheat, the staff of life.
Grok wouldn’t get near the giant carrots as they were the T-Rex’s main food. When they weren’t munching on carrots they were playfully cavorting with the unicorns in fields of daisies.
Honest, a vegan told me so it must be true!
You guys crack me up…
Mark, I like the format change. Nice organization!
Re; vegetarian ancestors.
Dear America,
Catch up with science.
- Whilst this stunning ‘look at the gut and try to hold it up against other animal guts to see which fits best’ approach just screams good science, the authors may wish to look into genes. I hear the human genome was cracked a while ago now…
– And if you do look into it, you will find any number of genes and variations associated with meat eating. You will also find certain populations die living of plants; has anyone told the Evenks to just go veggie in the Siberian winters? (Indeed their legendary intolerance to grain alcohol comes from their having adapted so well to meat and fat that they can’t even digest carbohydrates in that quantity well any more).
Not to divert from the contest, but I live in an area that allows front yard gardens to encompass whole front yards and I will testify to the fact that few look as beautiful or are as well maintained as the one featured in the article. Generally I would like to see HOAs taking the brunt of the responsibility, but in their absence 30% seems like a reasonable amount.
For the vegetarian theory:
In my culture there is one classic saying: “The pig is the best vegetable!”
If by vegetarian you mean “meat eater” than yes, I agree.