Papua New Guinea - Sweet Potato Diet

[DaveFoster]

"A dietary survey undertaken in the Western Highlands in 1972 showed that the diet consisted almost entirely of sweet potato. The daily energy intake was 2300 for males and 1770 kilocalories for females. Of the total energy intake, 94% was derived from carbohydrate, 3% from protein and 2.4% from fat (76). Adults were consuming only 25g of protein per day. By contrast, Australians derive 40% of their calories from fat and consume approximately 100g of protein per day. However, in spite of their low protein intake, the New Guineans represented a remarkably healthy group."

SOURCE: http://www.wpro.who.int/publications/docs/diet_food_supply_obesity.pdf (pg. 21)

 

[Peater Piper]

I wonder if it was the orange or the white/yellow variety.

 

[DaveFoster]

I wonder if it was the orange or the white/yellow variety.

The orange, kumara.
Sweet potato - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[GAF]

sliced Sweet Potato fried up in coconut oil smothered in sea salt is yummy to my tummy

 

[tobieagle]

If Ray is right, the protein content is probably way higher.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Yes and they don't die from endotoxin poisoning or persorption of starch from the tuber and they don't have type two diabetes from starch "spiking" insulin which is a normal, biochemical reaction to it. Similar to the Okinawans but they have purple-fleshed SP which have other phytonutrients: Okinawa longevity diet high in Vitamin A (from beta-carotene)

Starch is essentially the sun, (real starch not biscuits and cakes) when you eat it, you're eating the sun:

Textbook: "Starch is a very important and widely distributed natural product, occurring in the leaves of green plants, seeds, fruits, stems, roots, and tubers. It serves as the chemical storage form of the energy of the sun and is the primary source of energy for the organisms on the Earth. Starch is composed of two kinds of polysaccharides, amylose and amylopectin, exclusively composed of d‑glucose residues with α‑(1→4) linkages in a linear amylose and α‑(1→4) linkages and ∼5% α‑(1→6) branch linkages in amylopectin, both combined in a water‐insoluble granule that is partially crystalline and whose size, shape, and morphology are dependent on its biological source. The properties, isolation, fractionation, enzymatic degradation, biosynthesis, chemical modification, and specific methods of analysis of starch are presented."

The Polynesians also loved the tuber: How The Sweet Potato Crossed The Pacific Way Before The Europeans Did

“Approximately 70 distinct varieties of sweet potatoes having Hawaiian names are known to the native growers, and fully 200 others are either unnamed or bear English names.4 “

“It can not be definitely determined when the sweet potato (Ipomcea batatas) was first cultivated in Hawaii, but it is thougt that the crop has been under cultivation on the island since about 500 A. D. because the taro, which is a companion crop of the sweet potato, has, from the earliest days, constituted the staple food crop of the natives. Captain Cook records the finding in 1778 of specimens of taro of large size, and sweet potatoes, weighing 12 to 14 pounds, in the Hawaiian Islands, then known as the Sandwich Islands.“

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/B-50.pdf

 

[bobbybobbob]

However, they have an insane murder rate. Therefore we can conclude eating mostly sweet potatoes turns you into a murderer.

No joke, if you include infanticide the murder rate is so high in a lot of these places I wonder how the longevity and health stats are skewed. If you're weak or unhealthy you stand a good chance of getting offed.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

However, they have an insane murder rate. Therefore we can conclude eating mostly sweet potatoes turns you into a murderer.

The study from the OP was from the Western Highlands, far away from the gangs of today.

So are all of the Brazilians and Venezuelans who have an ever higher murder rate eating sweet potatoes? Or the kids in Southside Chicago? And Mexico, El Salvador, and Honduras?

List of cities by murder rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Raskol gangs ruling the streets of the country's capital city, Port Moresby which started in the 70's have nothing to do with the giant island and historical diet of thousands of years in a rural, non-modern city setting.

 

[bobbybobbob]

The murder rate in the highlands is probably the highest in the world. Your list of cities doesn't enter into it. By all accounts it was even higher before white contact. You basically can't go anywhere in the countryside there without armed escort.

 

[Peater Piper]

The orange, kumara.
Sweet potato - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Nice! I really enjoy them, but the high oxalates and insane beta carotene levels have scared me away from ever going too crazy with them. I doubt I've ever eaten more than a couple in a week, although I have huge servings of them in casseroles during the holidays. I've tried to find nutritional profiles of some of the different varieties, but have come up empty. I assume the white and purple fleshed varieties are lower in beta carotene but probably comparable otherwise (with the purple ones being loaded with anthocyanin).

 

[DaveFoster]

Therefore we can conclude eating mostly sweet potatoes turns you into a murderer.

Ray Peat would be proud.

I mean, starch is evil, but not that evil.

As WestsidePUFA suggested, these populations are well-adapted to their own diets. As a Northern European, my ancestral diet is composed of dairy, fruit, berries, and fatty meats, as written in Tacitus's Germania.

Evolution is not non-contextually gradualistic as dogmatically parroted at present. Punctuated equilibrium allows for some periods of rapid adaptation.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

The murder rate in the highlands is probably the highest in the world. Your list of cities doesn't enter into it. By all accounts it was even higher before white contact. You basically can't go anywhere in the countryside there without armed escort.

Source? I can’t find to back anything you’re saying. Jared Diamond is still alive and through his whole documentary the locals are nothing but sweet and kind.

The United Nations ranks New Guinea all the way down at number 171 when you adjust the "rate" by clicking the arrow in the "rate" column," in the biggest study done on the subject of per 100,000 people:

List of countries by intentional homicide rate - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Regardless, your argument doesn’t prove that eating a certain food will cause people to kill. By that logic, the British Empire which killed and destroyed from around 1600-1940, 400 years, was because of the British diet. Politics have nothing to do with human biochemistry.

 

[Drareg]

Yes and they don't die from endotoxin poisoning or persorption of starch from the tuber and they don't have type two diabetes from starch "spiking" insulin which is a normal, biochemical reaction to it. Similar to the Okinawans but they have purple-fleshed SP which have other phytonutrients: Okinawa longevity diet high in Vitamin A (from beta-carotene)

Starch is essentially the sun, (real starch not biscuits and cakes) when you eat it, you're eating the sun:

Textbook: "Starch is a very important and widely distributed natural product, occurring in the leaves of green plants, seeds, fruits, stems, roots, and tubers. It serves as the chemical storage form of the energy of the sun and is the primary source of energy for the organisms on the Earth. Starch is composed of two kinds of polysaccharides, amylose and amylopectin, exclusively composed of d‑glucose residues with α‑(1→4) linkages in a linear amylose and α‑(1→4) linkages and ∼5% α‑(1→6) branch linkages in amylopectin, both combined in a water‐insoluble granule that is partially crystalline and whose size, shape, and morphology are dependent on its biological source. The properties, isolation, fractionation, enzymatic degradation, biosynthesis, chemical modification, and specific methods of analysis of starch are presented."

The Polynesians also loved the tuber: How The Sweet Potato Crossed The Pacific Way Before The Europeans Did

“Approximately 70 distinct varieties of sweet potatoes having Hawaiian names are known to the native growers, and fully 200 others are either unnamed or bear English names.4 “

“It can not be definitely determined when the sweet potato (Ipomcea batatas) was first cultivated in Hawaii, but it is thougt that the crop has been under cultivation on the island since about 500 A. D. because the taro, which is a companion crop of the sweet potato, has, from the earliest days, constituted the staple food crop of the natives. Captain Cook records the finding in 1778 of specimens of taro of large size, and sweet potatoes, weighing 12 to 14 pounds, in the Hawaiian Islands, then known as the Sandwich Islands.“

http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/oc/freepubs/pdf/B-50.pdf

All food is a product of the sun. Your not eating the sun as that would hurt.
Are biscuits and cakes synthetic?

Papua New Guinea has hundreds of different tribes spread all over the country,one of the only places world wide to have this. There is also urbanisation.
It's highly unlikely they can diagnose anything sufficiently in this case. Do you have any studies for this ,they have 0.05 physicians per 1000 inhabitants,this not great for accurate statistics. Highly likely the physicians are based in urban zones.

Human development index is 156 out of 186 as of 2008. There huge social issues still needed to addressed.
Life expectancy : 60 for male - 65 for female.

Here is a study showing diabetes going undiagnosed in Papa New Guinea. There are many studies on increasing diabetes. So yes they do have diabetes.
A survey of diabetes services in hospitals in Papua New Guinea. - PubMed - NCBI

Here's a strawman I will create as an example.
What does this paragraph below mean from the study posted ? It says obese leaders who were on this diet you speak of. The lower social classes ate different food to the elites mainly starches , were they healthier? The lower social classes were not obese yet they could not overthrow what appears to be a greedy elite.
Does saturated fat based obesity make you stupid ,probably not. Starches clearly made the lower social class passive.


Pollock highlights some basic distinctions of Pacific people, especially a very different social economy to that of the Europeans (22). The author explains that Pacific economies were based on wide social networks and land was more important for determining identity and traditional ties than it was for providing food. Health was a group concept – a shared sense of well-being and food had symbolic and economic importance rather than being a biological necessity. This was epitomized by the Pacific aristocracy and leaders. The chiefs were the symbolic leaders of the clan and, as a result, were usually the largest (obese) people in the community. The author estimates that Pacific people were vegetarian 85% of the time. The high value placed on starchy foods still persists.
Meat and fish were consumed but, in Polynesian society, pork was denied to the lower classes. Feasts were not all that common. The traditional diet of the people was mainly large quantities of starchy root crops with a side of green leaves, seafood and coconut. This has been slowly replaced by imported foods to the point of food dependency in the 1980s.

 

[DaveFoster]

I've heard from many sources that Polynesians are very mild in general, and this has been my experience.

Filipinos are also very peaceful in most cases.

Politics have nothing to do with human biochemistry.

I disagree. The feminization of the West has coincided with a rise in environmental phytoestrogens and estrogenic foodstuffs.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Here is a study showing diabetes going undiagnosed in Papa New Guinea. There are many studies on increasing diabetes. So yes they do have diabetes.

Yes and did you notice the date of the study? 2001.

And did you notice the location?

"16 hospitals were successfully surveyed. Type 1 diabetes is very rare, with 18 known cases in the country (6 less than 15 years old). Known type 2 cases totalled around 4600 with almost all cases in coastal centres, particularly Port Moresby, East New Britain and Manus. There were very few cases in the highlands. Insulin is generally available, along with oral hypoglycaemic drugs. Testing for complications is very limited, and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) testing is available in only one centre. Only 3 trained diabetes educators are available in the country, with 1 dietitian and no specialist endocrinologists."

Again, not the same as eating traditional, historical diet for thousands of years. The T2D is the same as everyone else today.

I like how the study mentioned the rareness of T1D, something I've mentioned before. Another clear example of how rare T1D is and how type two is from junk foods, pufa, flour, too much safa, lack of fiber, too much adipose tissue spillage into the bloodstream, etc.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

I disagree. The feminization of the West has coincided with a rise in environmental phytoestrogens and estrogenic foodstuffs

Those have health effects but the actual feminization has more to do with the culture of the success of the baby boomers and their kids, and essentially the calmness of the 80's and 90's. People often remember the Reagan era (besides poor people) and the Clinton era as such good times. That comfort is why you see all the SJW's today. They have nothing to complain about so they make stuff up out of boredom. When a country like the US becomes too successful, they become too happy and comfortable and when real things happen outside like Putin or North Korea, parents will say "you send your kids to war, I'm too comfortable to send mine. We're just trying to live our life and be happy. We just got the mortgage on the house. I don't wanna get involved in this. Send the poor kids." So who's left to defend your country if needed? It's the paradox of a wealthy country.

 

[Drareg]

Yes and did you notice the date of the study? 2001.

And did you notice the location?

"16 hospitals were successfully surveyed. Type 1 diabetes is very rare, with 18 known cases in the country (6 less than 15 years old). Known type 2 cases totalled around 4600 with almost all cases in coastal centres, particularly Port Moresby, East New Britain and Manus. There were very few cases in the highlands. Insulin is generally available, along with oral hypoglycaemic drugs. Testing for complications is very limited, and glycosylated haemoglobin (HbA1c) testing is available in only one centre. Only 3 trained diabetes educators are available in the country, with 1 dietitian and no specialist endocrinologists."

Again, not the same as eating traditional, historical diet for thousands of years. The T2D is the same as everyone else today.

I like how the study mentioned the rareness of T1D, something I've mentioned before. Another clear example of how rare T1D is and how type two is from junk foods, pufa, flour, too much safa, lack of fiber, too much adipose tissue spillage into the bloodstream, etc.

The study I posted was an example of the lack of diagnosis making capabilities they have. This does not equal no diabetes. You also did not paste the last paragraph which makes clear why I posted it.

Davefosters study you quote is from 2001 also.

Can you show me the health studies from the historical thousands of years while following the traditional diet?
Can you show me the diet studies from the historical thousands of years diet they have consumed, in a climate like that,they will be eating a lot of fruit.

Did you like how the study also mentions there is a lack of diabetes diagnosis training in papa new Guinea?

 

[Drareg]

Those have health effects but the actual feminization has more to do with the culture of the success of the baby boomers and their kids, and essentially the calmness of the 80's and 90's. People often remember the Reagan era (besides poor people) and the Clinton era as such good times. That comfort is why you see all the SJW's today. They have nothing to complain about so they make stuff up out of boredom. When a country like the US becomes too successful, they become too happy and comfortable and when real things happen outside like Putin or North Korea, parents will say "you send your kids to war, I'm too comfortable to send mine. We're just trying to live our life and be happy. We just got the mortgage on the house. I don't wanna get involved in this. Send the poor kids." So who's left to defend your country if needed? It's the paradox of a wealthy country.

How can politics have no effect on biochemistry? what's the main source of stress today?

The majority of every famine caused is because of government/politics .No country have ever starved on famine terms unless the Government /politics were involved .
Politics have everything to do with biochemistry.

 

[Westside PUFAs]

Can you show me the health studies from the historical thousands of years while following the traditional diet?
Can you show me the diet studies from the historical thousands of years diet they have consumed, in a climate like that,they will be eating a lot of fruit.

Do you have a time machine? I can show you historical paintings by the British when they came across the Polynesians in Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand and none of them were fat. No painting shows this and James Cook never mentioned it once in his journals. 90% of people who have T2D have excess adipose tissue. Yes they ate fruit but they also ate starchy tubers too. And guess what else they ate, fish, before the ocean was the toxic soup it is now.

 

[Drareg]

Do you have a time machine? I can show you historical paintings by the British when they came across the Polynesians in Tahiti, Hawaii, and New Zealand and none of them were fat. No painting shows this and James Cook never mentioned it once in his journals. 90% of people who have T2D have excess adipose tissue. Yes they ate fruit but they also ate starchy tubers too. And guess what else they ate, fish, before the ocean was the toxic soup it is now.

You need a time machine and and an individual who can diagnose diabetes. There lifespans were low from said time periods ,the current life spans are on average 63 years old.

The study Davefoster posted has Pollack stating their leaders were obese ,the lower social class were not. Something on the islands made them obese. Reasonable questions on intelligence/metabolism of the lower social class can be asked.

Few Paintings will show fat people for reasons of human vanity ,iPhones have filters for a reason in modern times.

People without type 2 diabetes have excess a dispose tissue.