The Calorie Paradox of Raw Veganism (1999)
beyondveg.com
beyondveg.com
For that reason, I do not see veganism as something that fits to human nature as such. It may be, however, possible to do this in a healthy manner, and the motivation may instead be that it is better for the environment.
But I think the argument can not be, that we are somehow meant to be vegans.
But I'm not sure these arguments are really that relevant to the present. We have radically reshaped nature to suit our needs and that includes everything we eat, both animal and vegetable. These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now.
Where can I read more about this?
>If anything we're opportunistic primates that evolved to take advantage of calories where we found them.
That sure sounds like "omnivore" to me.
>These appeals to nature generally ignore the fact that the things we ate over the millennia don't exist now.
They also fail the other way: for example, humans have evolved new metabolic pathways for adult consumption of lactose at least twice in the last 100,000 years, and they're different pathways! (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3048992/)
homestasis doesn't mean "everything is constant", it means "everything's moving all the time, and the set point doesn't change a lot if things are going well because we're always compensating"
As for humans being closer to herbivores, our dentition, stomach acid and saliva composition, and digestive tract are much more like those of herbivores than carnivores.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancest...
I disagree that our teeth and guts are more akin to herbivores, and so does the article you link. Hell, if you google image search for "omnivore teeth" the first result is literally a human mouth. Do some omnivores mouths look different? Sure, some have evolved to eat more live prey than others- some canines are bigger than others because of this. But the same teeth are present; most herbivores literally do not have canines. The ones that do, such as elephants, aren't used for eating but instead for defense or manipulating their environment so I don't think that counts.
Again I’m not claiming that humans are pure herbivores. Just that we’re closer to that side of the omnivore spectrum.
And smaller jaws generations by generations... I believe anthropology concluded this adaptation was caused by cooking. Certainly, gorillas who are almost obligate herbivores have proportionally bigger fangs than us.
Incidentally, human guts don't ferment plants at all, so I'd argue we are closer to the carnivore half of the omnivore spectrum.
Or perhaps we outsource the fermentation to our tools and storages, which is actually a valid animal feeding tactics..
[0] https://ucdintegrativemedicine.com/2016/03/youre-not-cow-gor...
Herbivores tend to use premolars and molars to grind and crush vegetation. Carnivores use sharp incisors to cut food and canines to tear food (like flesh from bones). There is no need for a herbivore to ever have canines. Homo Sapiens have both, but our premolars and molars are less pronounced than herbivores.
It is logical and seems to be scientifically accurate to deduce Homo Sapiens are evolved to be Omnivores.
"Why These Vegetarian Monkeys Have Sharp Predator Teeth" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aC6iYj_EBjY)
"Geladas are the only primates that are primarily graminivores and grazers – grass blades make up to 90% of their diet. They eat both the blades and the seeds of grasses. When both blades and seeds are available, geladas prefer the seeds. They eat flowers, rhizomes and roots when available,[12][13] using their hands to dig for the latter two. They consume herbs, small plants, fruits, creepers, bushes and thistles.[12][13] Insects can be eaten, but only rarely and only if they can easily be obtained." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gelada#Range_and_ecology)
edit: and hippos
edit: and flying foxes (frugivores)
You can get plenty of calories from rice and beans. For millenia, the bulk of humanity has lived on really plain foods with little meat (though in some places like europe, north africa, and the middle east, quite a bit of cheese).
Extracting nutrients from uncooked foods is a lot less biochemically efficient for our digestive system, though, and it's going to be the rate-limiting step. If you rule out rice, oatmeal, porridges, bread, tofu, etc... you are likely to be in a mode of basically permanent caloric defect.
A great example is maize. Raw corn is not going to keep you alive for very long. Masa, though, sustains entire civilizations, and it only works because you cook off the meal in high-pH water.
It's still going to be a lot of effort spent eating, and it does seem like they're going for calorie-restricted life extension. But it's not quite as impossible as it sounds, and with a bunch of effort it's actually quite delicious. (And involves at least as much time as cooking.)
It's definitely not my thing, especially since there's so much woo-woo associated with it, but I've had some raw vegan meals and quite enjoyed them. (Omnivory means getting to try everything, which I really like.)
I know many on a vegan diet and many on raw food. High nut consumption is definitely a thing. What is this "party line" being talked about here? Feels like a straw man kind of.
> An alternative is a diet of nuts (fats) and sweet fruit (sugar). Such a diet may work better than a diet of avocados and sweet fruits. However, such a diet violates the strict form of the raw "party line" that one should sharply limit nut consumption.
Is there a source for that this is considered a violation by many?
Anecdotally, I know a guy who sustains pretty much exclusively on nuts and fruits grown where he lives (commune in Spain, they have nut trees) for 6 months a year (he's traveling the rest) and claims he never felt better and aims at keeping at it.
The main reason to limit fruit and nuts is because they might be too high in calories. Obviously that limiting is not something you should take too far. Maybe the author misunderstood and cut fruits and nuts out completely?
"Further, a significant amount of willpower is required to resist the frequent sugar cravings, which often leads to food (and self) obsessions (very common in fruitarianism)."
Did I miss the study where it was found that fruitarians are often self-obsessed? I would venture a guess that most _people_ are self-obsessed, regardless of their diet.
And this is purely anecdotal, but I watched a youtube video about a guy who went raw fruititarian for a few months, and his before and after photos were not inspiring. He lost some weight, but his skin and hair seemed fragile, and he seemed kind of lethargic and spacey in his after video.
The result is a lot of energy (except sometimes 1-2 hrs of digestion), no cold or other common illness, and a low BMI (body-mass index) indeed (I'm around 18), because it's not only low-calorie, but the fibers give a feeling of satiety for a long time
I seems obvious that eating an apple vs eating a mars bar is quite different, though the total sugar is more or less the same.
So they're not identical, but I'd say that "more or less the same" is sufficiently accurate. (The apple, however, does have fiber and some other vitamins and minerals, so it's definitely a better choice. It's just best not to devote too much of your diet to it.)
[1] https://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/fruits-and-fruit-juices...
I think we sometimes place too much importance on the origin of things, and convince ourselves that "apple sugar" is more healthy than "candy sugar". The thing which makes an apple more healthy is that the sugar is suspended in a lot more fiber, so it takes longer to reach your blood stream. The sugar itself is more or less the same as far as your metabolism is concerned.
If you refined the sugar out of apples and put it in a mars bar in a green wrapper which said it was made from "all natural ingredients", it would not be healthier than any other mars bar.
In fact, modern fruit is so sweet it's been deemed unsafe for zoo animals:
https://qz.com/1408469/humans-have-bred-fruits-to-be-so-high...
The things I would challenge are: - Lots of Energy (compared to what? Measured how?) - No cold or other common illness (a huge claim that requires substantial evidence to support it).
Which is to say I believe his claim without evidence because it is probably true. However it isn't his diet.
A BMI that low is not a good thing. It is evidence against your diet being optimal. Mortality rates are actually higher when BMI is below 20 (https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2156 https://www.bmj.com/content/bmj/353/bmj.i2156/F3.large.jpg -- although causality is not established). And from a common sense or aesthetic perspective, such a low BMI almost certainly means you lack ideal muscle mass.
60kg at 1.82m strikes me as really fricking thin. I'm your height, and have considered myself a lean, athletic guy, but at 13% bodyfat I weigh 80kg.
My daily activity doesn't require some more particular strength (although I wouldn't consider myself weak either), it's more about endurance. I've enough core strength to not have any back problem too (I avoid sitting on a chair though, but rather lie down/stretch out in front of my laptop)
When you see the typical Japanese centenarian, who have a BMI around 19 (mean: 19.3±0.4, median: 18.9 (11.9, 30.2), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5107392/), it contradicts this statement. I'm not Asian, and I'm taller (BMI is usually lower for taller ppl)
in conclusion, people have very different morphologies, so BMI isn't so significant
The ideal solution, in my opinion, would be to brew tissue in a factory, sans brains, just the muscular system of animals. Seems plausible, right?
The problem is to reach that state, we require research. Research needs funding, and the only ones with an incentive to do that are companies that deal with meat. I imagine it is way more expensive to take care of animals than it would be to just grow muscles. But now that veganism is eating the world, that creates an impediment to that incentive, as the demand is now reduced and so the companies can just sustain their current production levels instead of finding ways to optimize them and therefore funding the research necessary.
So, in effect, veganism is causing more animals to die in the macro-process of us reaching the technological state of growing tissue in the lab.
What do you think?
I don’t think veganism is eating the world. https://animalcharityevaluators.org/blog/is-the-percentage-o... “2017 saw the highest per capita egg consumption in the U.S. in over 20 years.5 Per capita red meat and poultry consumption in the U.S. has been increasing as well, and is expected to reach a record high in 2018.”
Although there may be some larger % of vegetarians or vegans than a few decades ago, I don’t think that anywhere near a majority of the population will ever convert to that movement. They’ll happily continue eating meat rather than switch what they eat for moral/ideological reasons.
I agree with you that cultured meat is a much better food solution than factory farming, and I will absolutely advocate for that. But veganism isn't causing more animals to die by reducing demand for meat -- that logically doesn't follow.
(Also, "veganism is eating the world" is false -- it is on the rise, but less than one per cent of Americans are vegan, at least as of 2015. As a vegan, I still get a lot of looks and comments that prove that my lifestyle is not the norm.)
Your line of thought would make sense if meat production was artificially limited and exponentially more expensive (because of environmental restrictions or farmland price, for example). Instead the opposite is happening. Meat's never been cheaper.
It doesn't seem plausible to me at all. Why not just eat plants and cut out all the inefficient processing (either via animals or lab grown tissue)? It seems like a solution in search of a problem.
On the other hand, the strict keto dieters are eating meat which has excessive cholesterol, artery clogging saturated fats and red meat has high loadings of free iron (toxic).