• Guest - w'd love to know what you think about the forum! Take the 2025 Survey »

Article in Sunday Times Magazine

H

hanadr

Expert
Messages
8,157
Dislikes
soaps on telly and people talking about the characters as if they were real.
There's an interesting article in Today's(17/08/08) Sunday Times Magazine. It's about the Stone Age Diet. Check it out folks! it's imteresting. I read it just before eatintg my lunch of Steak, runner beans, carrots and mushrooms. Followed by blackberry and apple compote ( from the garden and free from added sugar. Beans from the garden too!) Now I'm going to walk the 2 miles to my friend's house.
 
Well spotted, hanadr.
I hadn't heard of this guy, Arthur De Vany, before but his views are entirely consistent with a number of supposedly dangerous heretics. Like some of us in fact!
It's another in a reasonably long line of such stories, dating back to William Banting in 1862. I wonder when the popular focus of attention will shift from fats to carbohydrates as the really harmful element in modern diets.
All the best,

fergus
 
I have just read it - its a bit of a wierd article - funny have a guy like that lives by me but he is 70 and runs 5 miles a day the article was poor I thought!
 
It figures, you wouldn't really like the diet, Ally, but the article was written by a journalist and not the guy who thought up the diet. I think it makes complete sense not to eat foods we didn't evolve with. Primitive grains would have been of no use to our stone aged ancestors, because,a) they were tiny, with very little nutrient value and b) they have to be cooked before humans can digest them and cooking came late in evolutionary time. We're not designed to get most of our calories from carbohydrates. A little is OK if your metabolism can handle it, butmost type 2 diabetics can't. that's why we're diabetic. I paricularly liked the bitwhere the doctors didn't think that the wife was a diabetic, because her carb intake was so low. I'm sure you've heard of David Mendosa. He no longer presents as diabetic, because he went onto Bernstein's strict low carb regime and dropped all medication. I haven't quite ot there yet, but it's my target
 
Well said, hanadr.
I guess two of the most significant moments in human history could have been the first controlled use of fire (circa 100,000 years ago) and then the agricultural revolution (10,000 years ago). Before fire, starches cannot have been part of the human diet at all since the controlled use of heat is usually necessary to make them digestible. Before the agricultural revolution, the effort required to gather starchy foods must have been too great, the rewards too small and unreliable to be worthwhile.
In other words, the starchy carbohydrates upon which a healthy diet is supposedly based are an extremely recent innovation. A blink in evolutionary time.
We are therefore biologicaly best adapted to diets predominantly based on protein and fat, the food sources we have unarguably eaten for the vast majority of our history.
Incidentally, I used to be a vegetarian by the way! :mrgreen:

All the best,

fergus
 
Hi

I thought the aticle was badly written . This idea that we should now eat like cave men - there are real gaps in what we know and one thing is for sure they didnt eat very well - they were probably hungry and I have read soemwhere they had a life expectancy of 30 years.

On this paleo regime how on earth do you eat meat for breakfast - a cooked bf is an occ for me.

I am still rtying to wade thro taubes book but i would really like to show him some real people - who eat tons of fat and are fat!

You know tho i am a huge advocate of ditching the junk - this is the biggest threat not a mormal intake of carbs form normal portions. We need to be focusing on portion sizes . I eat 2 slices of bread for lunch but there are so many people who eat 3-4 times more!
 
I didn't see the article. Is there a link.

Is the recommendation that we should eat raw meat, which is surely as indigestible as raw starch or cellulose?

The first food for man was vegetarian - fruit, seeds & nuts in an idyllic climate.

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. (Genesis 1:29.)

Meat was only introduced after the flood.

3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. (Genesis 9)

Ally, can you comment on Fergus' raw meat diet? And on the creation diet?
 
mmm but what about foods like potatoes - we can only suppose!

I guess someone else is making money out of the paleo diet - or atkins in another cloak lol!

The problem is that people were probably starving - and we ahve also evolved too.

Veggies make their own choice not to eat meat etc - doesnt make them more healthy
 
Hello IanD,

Here's a link to an article on Arthur De Vany's stone age diet from The Independant.

:arrow: The stone age diet: Why I eat like a caveman (The Independent Tuesday, 14 August 2007)

The stone age diet: what to eat

* Rule of thumb: If you can't gather it from a bush or tree, or spear it, it's probably best not to eat it.

* What you can eat: Lean meat and fish. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Eggs. Dried fruit (without added sugar or vegetable oil). Nuts and seeds.

* What you can't eat: Sugars, grains (no oats, wheat, barley or rye, etc), beans, peanuts (a bean not a nut) and starchy vegetables (such as potatoes). Dairy products.
Click to expand...

Banana anyone?

Regards
timo.
 
mm I wonder if they were clever enough to dry fruit - the whole thing is guess work - how do you know they didnt eat spuds and root veg.

Isnt alot of this based on speculation because we just do not know!
 
Dear IanD
Raw meat is NOt indigestible, haven't you heard of Steak Tartare? I don't care for it myself, by it is edible. I rather think that we should eat foods that are digestible raw, whether or not we then choose to cook them. We obviously are not desined to ingest too many carbs, which is probabaly why our carbohydrate metabolism is so vulnerable to damage. Don't forget it's not just diabetes, but coeliac diseast and colitis too.( yes I know it's gluten in coeliacs that causes the trouble, but it comes from grains) I don't think we should rely on processing our foods to make them edible. Look what happened when they made cattle into cannibals! Also anyone making their dogs vegetarian( yes they exist) is generally held up for ridicule. Cattle are herbivores, dogs are carnivores an we are omnivores. We don't have the herbivorous digestion.
 
Ally, early humans didn't eat potatoes, because they evolved on different continents.
 
The first food for man was vegetarian - fruit, seeds & nuts in an idyllic climate.

Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. (Genesis 1:29.)

Meat was only introduced after the flood.

3 Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.
4 “But you must not eat meat that has its lifeblood still in it. (Genesis 9)

Ally, can you comment on Fergus' raw meat diet? And on the creation diet?
Click to expand...

Ian, you're perfectly entitled to your views on our evolutionary history, although I doubt many others on the forum would share them. Let's try and stick to physical evidence, rather than metaphysics.
There's abundant evidence of our carnivorous past, way back to the Olduvai Gorge in East Africa and beyond. Our carnivorous history is generally thought to predate our bipedalism, which would date it at 6 million years at least.
I don't know where the raw meat diet idea came from though - it's not something I've ever advocated!

mmm but what about foods like potatoes - we can only suppose!
Click to expand...

Eh? No spuds in Europe before 1537, Ally. That Sir Walter Raleigh has a lot to answer for - tatties and fags!

All the best,

fergus
 
The reason that we are advised to lightly cook meat is to keep the vitamins from being destroyed and to reduce the formation of compounds that can cause cancer.

I am very fond of raw meats and love blue steak and sashimi especially raw tuna.

Interestingly one of my sons is going the same way as me whereas Steven (Mr Diabetes) prefers his meat to be actually cooked.
 
oh goodness Katherine i do hope you are not suggesting not cooking meat at all!

I think the paleo regime has huge gaps in evidence unless some else knows better!
 
eddie it might be but there are risks of food poisening esp with pork and chicken !

Any way i am off to spear some mince to make a chilli!
 
I'm pretty sure we've been down this line of debate before with the opposite sides becoming more and more firmly entrenched. But let me just say what anthropologists know to be true:
We've been meat eaters for over 6 million years.
We learned to control fire around 100,000 years ago.
Therefore, we have a pretty long and obviously very successful track record with raw meat!

All the best,

fergus
 
There are certainly meats I wouldn't undercook including: pork and chicken or mince.

You are better off undercooking meat that is in "one bit" so that any surface bacteria stay there.

I've just remembered that rather pink roast lamb with garlic and rosemary is another of my pretty underdone favourites.

I got a meat thermometer last year and this takes the guess work out of slow cooking/ working out if your meat is done/overdone/just right/too underdone.

One of my pals is a chef. When he is doing steaks he says that if you feel it with your fingers you can tell how done it is.

Rare is like your cheek.
Medium is like your forehead.
Well done is like your chin.
 
Back
Top