The only way to produce atherosclerosis in carnivores is to take out the thyroid gland;

[philalethes]

What conclusion, other than there was a necessity of ingesting some amount of animal products, do you see as a viable conclusion?

The point is precisely that there are often numerous other possible explanations, which often tend to be ignored. The one you mention is one possibility, as a lack of non-fruit vegetable matter can leave you with deficiencies of various kinds, but other possibilities could be e.g. eating too little food in general, which is extremely common (perhaps the most common problem I see in people eating similar diets, quickly leading to feeling cold, stressed out, anxious, and not sleeping well), or eating a far too narrow variety of fruit relative to whatever variety of non-fruit vegetables are eaten; if you look e.g. at this paper, you can see the humongous variation in plants consumed by some of our closest relative species:

As for plant foods, the chimpanzees have been seen to feed on 503 food items from 363 plant species. Fruit represents 73.76% of number of food species and 85% when one considers feeding time.

You seem to have said at other times in the thread that non-fruit vegetables would also "solve" this problem. How does this apply in this hypothetical (yet extremely common in the real world) case?

It is one of the more common problems, but I never said that it's always the solution. If you're e.g. undereating, then only specific non-fruit vegetables could ever make up for that (i.e. calorie-rich ones such as potatoes, or even grains), but even that is not always likely to be ideal to replace fruit with up to a certain point, as Ray Peat has shown to various extents. I do eat a lot of both sweet potato and Irish ("regular") potato, but I think it would be detrimental to primarily rely on such foods for carbohydrate rather than most of your carbohydrate coming from fruit.

I had some questions as well. So let me get this straight. You advocate for higher muscle mass, say “we have such large brains, precisely because we have a fairly simple enzyme-based digestive system,” and then proceed to advocate for proteinaceous vegetable matter instead of animal products as a protein source. Do you not see the contradiction in this?

There is no contradiction there at all. Having a simple enzyme-based digestive system is a hallmark of frugivorous great apes, and doesn't indicate at all that a species is suited to the consumption of animal matter; in fact, there are numerous indicators suggesting that humans are not suited to that at all. Also, it is simply a fact that our closest relative species derive the vast majority of their protein from relatively high-quality vegetable matter. Focusing primarily on chimpanzees and orangutans, since they are more similar to us physiologically than gorillas, the majority of the protein tends to come from three sources primarily:

Firstly, young and tender leaves that are low in rough fibers, and high in protein and non-structural carbohydrates, selected even for time of day; as described in e.g. this article:

Pterygota mildbraedii is a very large tree, common throughout the Ngogo chimpanzee habitat. The chimpanzees, however, eat young leaves of the saplings found near the forest floor. This study found that the leaves' hemicellulose - a more digestible fiber - and nonstructural carbohydrates - simple sugars and starch - increased 15 percent to 100 percent, respectively, from morning to evening. Cellulose and lignin, which make the leaves more difficult to digest, also decreased by day's end. Celtis africana is a smaller tree than Pterygota, the saplings of which contain many thin branches and small leaves. The sugars in this plant's leaves were found to double from morning to late afternoon.

"If these sugars or total non-structural carbohydrates are increasing, then the leaves are returning more calories late in the day," Carlson said. "At this time, they may taste sweeter, and the chimpanzees may then learn and adjust their feeding behavior accordingly. We know they use vision, texture, taste and smell to gauge when to eat fruit, so it's understandable to think they may do the same with leaves."

As mentioned by Milton on several occasions, such leaves tend to be rich in protein too. For example, in this classic article, which I would recommend reading in its entirety, she writes:

Selective pressures also favored considerable enhancement of the visual apparatus (including depth perception, sharpened acuity and color vision), thereby helping primates travel rapidly through the three-dimensional space of the forest canopy and easily discern the presence of ripe fruits or tiny, young leaves.

[...]

In contrast, spider monkeys, by passing food more quickly through their shorter, narrower colons, were less efficient at extracting energy from the fiber in their diet. This speed, however, enabled them to move masses of food through the gastrointestinal tract each day. By choosing fruits, which are highly digestible and rich in energy, they attained all the calories they needed and some of the protein. They then supplemented their basic fruit-pulp diet with a few very select young leaves that supplied the rest of the protein they required, without an excess of fiber.

Elsewhere she also talks about such leaves and how surprisingly nutritious they are in terms of protein:

"They would bite off the tips of leaves and throw the rest away," said Milton, who analyzed the leaves by sections and found the tips to be especially nutritious - a fact obviously known to the monkeys.

"Young leaves from tropical trees are far more nutritious than I realized. In fact, the young tips have the same profile of essential amino acids as meat, although in lower concentrations," said Milton. She said that leaf protein is perfectly good and clearly satisfies all the protein needs of the monkeys.

"I was very surprised," she said. "I always thought leafy material was deficient in some amino acids, but it is not."

Secondly, Milton has also found, as I mentioned in passing above, that wild fruits tend to have more protein than cultivated ones, and thus being at least closer to where fruits are wilder without necessarily living inside the rainforest like our ancestors, would likely be beneficial too.

And thirdly, also eaten are various legumes; like leaves these are also consumed when younger, before the plants invest more antinutrients in them, and when they're typically very high in protein. The fruit pods of such leguminous plants also tend to be higher in protein, due to how such plants tend to be nitrogen-fixing. As this article mentions (also included is a reference to how insectivory and carnivory in general was practically absent in the observed population, although the point out that they of course cannot observe everything they do, but even when it is observed it accounts for negligible amounts of protein):

The Ishasha fecal data also included seeds and pods from several leguminous species in the closed gallery forest where leguminous trees are among the dominant species and from one species in the dry forest margins. There was no evidence of meat-eating or insect-eating in either survey. The extent of foraging away from the forest is unclear although observations by park rangers and local informants, fresh feeding remains, food species distribution, and nests encountered during surveys indicate that such foraging occurs.

As humans, we obviously have capabilities to extract far more protein from sources that would otherwise be unfeasible for our closest relatives, as we can not only cook rougher vegetable matter, both rough leaves and e.g. cruciferous vegetables that would be practically inedible due to antinutrients that can be removed or destroyed through cooking, but we can even e.g. treat mature grains and leguminous seeds with alkaline substances to render them edible and nutritious (i.e. what Ray talks about when talking about masa harina and how it's produced, the same can be done with other grains and legumes too, such as the aforementioned legumes even when they're more mature), but it's still interesting to note exactly how our closest relative species derive their protein in a completely wild and natural state with virtually zero technological means (apart from some basic tool use, like breaking open nuts using stones).

 

[Sitaruîm]

The ability to eat something to derive energy and nutrition from it is absolutely not the same as it being what we're physiologically optimized for; I addressed this several times above, including with reference to Inuits, the shortest-living and most disease-ridden populations on the planet. I still contend that humans are not physiologically omnivores at all.



This is obviously not true, because for tens of millions of years we and our ancestor species did precisely that in the tropical equatorial rainforest, where we evolved for all that time. It's also a patently absurd claim when you consider the fact that our closest relative species still live in those environments and still sustain themselves in those ways (as do many other primates too).



Veganism has nothing to do with humans physiologically being herbivores; the former is an ideological stance that is often completely divorced from anything that concerns optimal human health, while the latter is a statement about human physiology that has nothing to do with ideology.



Which is completely irrelevant to humans and the other frugivorous great apes, which are ripe fruit specialists that are physiologically optimized for fresh and ripe fruits that are extremely high in caloric value.



You're talking about folivores and other grass-eaters; that's not the only type of herbivore that exists. Humans are not gorillas, in terms of digestive physiology we are far more similar to chimpanzees and orangutans, the other two frugivorous great apes.



True; and this is also why we have such large brains, precisely because we have a fairly simple enzyme-based digestive system optimized for fresh and ripe fruit. In fact, as mentioned previously, degree of frugivory is strongly associated with brain size in primates, and as I also mentioned the human brain itself is literally made almost entirely out of sugar, due to how brain cholesterol synthesis is decoupled from the rest of the body and occurs de novo in situ from intermediates of its energy metabolism (and needless to say, unless you're starving the brain runs almost exclusively on sugar).



I have; and as explained above, this statement simply isn't true. But it's worth noting that only tropical equatorial rainforests can naturally support highly frugivorous great apes, which is why all the other great apes still live more or less exactly on the equator, and why we ourselves evolved there.

But meat is tasty

 

[philalethes]

I don't think your intelligence level is high enough at the moment for me to make you realize quickly without investing too much time, I prefer to stop there.

Well, no offense, but I don't think "you're too stupid" is exactly very accounting of people's sensitivities. As promised, it certainly doesn't hurt my feelings, but if that's all you can resort to instead of actually addressing anything of substance, you've basically given up completely.

From what it's worth, from my perspective it's clearly you who seems to lack the intelligence necessary (I'm rubber, you're glue) to understand what I'm saying.

Even the most intelligent apes on this planet, are not even CLOSE to even the least intelligent modern humans, in neurological capabilities and complexity. Comparing their optimal diet to ours, is ineffectual from a physiological standpoint.

This is technically true, but you don't seem to understand the underlying neurophysiological details of why that is the case. It's not that human brains are actually that special compared to other great apes, it's primarily that we have more undifferentiated neural matter, the cortex, which represents ~80% of the entire brain mass, including the neocortex, which represents the majority of this at ~75% of brain mass. This combined with the unprecedented explosion in brain size seen starting long before anatomically modern humans exited the rainforest indicates an epigenetic explanation for this proliferation of undifferentiated neural tissue. And what's necessary to maintain such large brains is primarily abundant sugar and antioxidative secondary active metabolites, not any large amount of protein at all.

Saying that comparing their diet to ours is "ineffectual from a physiological standpoint" is nonsensical, because the physiological similarities between us are extremely significant.

Move anywhere in the world you like, and try to maintain yourself on wild plant foods.

This is a straw man, because that's not what I'm arguing at all. That being said, it's certainly not impossible, as you seem to think it is.

The indigenous human tribes that live in the equatorial jungles you mention can’t even comprehend when you tell them some humans dont eat meat, and they have more access to wild edible plants than anyone else on the planet.

This isn't true at all, and there are plenty of indigenous populations that hardly consume any animal matter at all.

It's also largely irrelevant when it comes to everything we now know about human physiology; hypothetically speaking, if e.g. animal matter has adverse consequences for great ape health, a chimpanzee or indigenous person might not care about this due to a lack of knowledge, but us with more knowledge could rationally avoid it instead and opt for more physiologically suitable foods.

They are small and lean, with comparatively simple daily neurological requirements, and they still have to hunt constantly to maintain themselves.

I strongly doubt that's true. Most of them do hunt to various extents, but it being necessary is a contentious topic. In chimpanzees it's been established that hunting is largely a social activity that serves to establish dominance hierarchies, and there's no reason to suspect similar explanations can't be possible for humans. As Jared Diamond humorously points out in The Great Leap Forward, such foods accounts for a tiny minority of what's eaten compared to what's gathered:

But studies of modern hunter gatherers, with far more effective weapons than those of early H. sapiens, show that most of a family’s calories come from plant food gathered by women. Men catch rats and other small game never mentioned in their heroic campfire stories. Occasionally they get a large animal, which does indeed contribute significantly to protein intake. But it’s only in the Arctic, where little plant food is available, that big-game hunting becomes the dominant food source. And humans didn’t reach the Arctic until around 30,000 years ago.

I’m not trying to convince you, or anyone else, what to eat. Eat what you want. I just think your logic is ignoring huge droves of available information and critical thinking.

Well, clearly you are trying to convince people that what you're saying is true, that's the point of taking part in such a discussion. However, as noted so far, I don't think what you're saying is true at all, and I think you're repeating a lot of common talking points that are either false or only very marginally rooted in fact. From my perspective, it's your attempted logic which is ignoring the vast majority of the actual scientific evidence, and lacking in critical thinking.

 

[philalethes]

But meat is tasty

Well, that something feels good is not ultimately a great argument for whether or not something is physiologically suitable and healthy long-term. This is apparent from the analogy I provided earlier about the dog and the opiates, but is apparent when thinking about opiates in general; I haven't done opiates myself, but from all accounts of it and how they work biochemically, they feel extremely good, probably a lot better than some tasty meat ever could, and yet they can be extremely detrimental to human physiology.

Interestingly, a similar thing can be said for the breast milk of various animals, as the digestion of various caseins leads to casomorphins, which are potent opioid receptor agonists, designed to keep infants suckling. This is perhaps most prominent when it comes to cheese, since 80% of the protein in cheese is casein, and cheese typically contains a lot of protein (typically as much as 20-30 grams of protein per 100 grams of cheese).

When one considers bovine breast milk in particular, it is meant to keep a calf so addicted to suckling its mother's teats that it will grow as much as 200 kilograms in a single year, which is why cow's milk contains over three times as much protein as human breast milk. Not only does cheese contain almost ten times as much protein as cow's milk, but bovine casomorphins have themselves shown to be as much as ten times more potent opioid receptor agonists.

 

[LastingJoy]

Well, no offense, but I don't think "you're too stupid" is exactly very accounting of people's sensitivities. As promised, it certainly doesn't hurt my feelings, but if that's all you can resort to instead of actually addressing anything of substance, you've basically given up completely.

From what it's worth, from my perspective it's clearly you who seems to lack the intelligence necessary (I'm rubber, you're glue) to understand what I'm saying.

Hi, I didn't say you are too stupid, I said I don't think your intelligence level is high enough right now to make you realize your contradictions on this post quickly enough, so I didn't imply you were stupid, it's a projection at this point or you not understanding the nuances.

It is perfectly accounting of your sensitivity, you said that nothing I could write would hurt your feelings, so if you didn't lie, my accounting for your sensivity is 10/10.

Yes I have stopped trying to make you understand why what you describe seems contradictory, because once I point out simple contradictory examples, and you reject them, I'm not interested in wasting any more time, like if we invest so much time pointing out potential contradictions in every writing on the forum we'll never end.

I understand all your simple writings,

Among your absurdities you tell Jennifer that if her spine was broken during a frugivorous diet, you have an interpretation bias that "they must certainly have been doing something quite wrong or unreasonable, and are now mistaking a quick fix that will lead to long-term problems for a solution" before you even have the details of her diet,

and you certainly don't agree with the notion that a human (and Jennifer) needs animal protein to be healthy, and that she could have restored her health without it with other changes, when you yourself have never been optimally healthy on a frugivorous diet, considering that you take supplements, so you have a negative interpretation bias or you assume that Jennifer must have something wrong with her diet, when you have no personal experience that shows that a frugivorous diet without supplements leads to optimal health for humans in the long run.

So at this point your speech is already a "memes", Jennifer is speaking from her own experience, you are contradicting her with theories that have not been confirmed by your own experiences, this is probably one of the reasons why she stopped talking to you, you are telling someone who has more experience than you on a subject, and who seems to be more intelligent than you that you assume she must have done things wrong before you have the evidence,

like just your use of the word "need" in this context shows that your intelligence could be much higher.

It's not my intention to hurt your feelings or your pride, so if you feel that what I'm telling you makes you want to respond with some toxicity, I recommend you don't respond

 

[philalethes]

Hi, I didn't say you are too stupid, I said I don't think your intelligence level is high enough right now to make you realize your contradictions on this post quickly enough, so I didn't imply you were stupid, it's a projection at this point or you not understanding the nuances.

The phrase "your intelligence level is not high enough" is synonymous with "you're stupid", no matter how gently you try to phrase it or explain it away. Trying to say that I'm projecting when you're just trying to phrase things in a contrived manner to maintain an air of superior sensitivity (which is long gone by now, as I hope you realize) is nothing short of ridiculous.

And again, there has been no contradiction in anything I've said so far, and I've thoroughly addressed your relatively naive attempts at trying to make it out as such.

Yes I have stopped trying to make you understand why what you describe seems contradictory, because once I point out simple contradictory examples, and you reject them, I'm not interested in wasting any more time, like if we invest so much time pointing out potential contradictions in every writing on the forum we'll never end.

The problem here is that you're the one who appears to be greatly lacking in understanding, and you've apparently given up on actually addressing anything of substance.

Yes, I reject your naive attempts at trying to make it out as if anything I've said is contradictory, as I've both addressed why it's not, and also how you had to ignore most of what I wrote to even arrive at those fallacious conclusions in the first place.

I understand all your simple writings,

You clearly have not understood what I've written at all, based on your fallacious attempts at addressing it so far. You've also claimed that what I'm writing gives your brain fog, so if anyone's being contradictory here, it seems to be you; are my writings "paving stones" that somehow give you brain fog, or are they simple writings? Also, if they're so simple, why do you keep ignoring most of them? This doesn't seem to check out in my view.

Among your absurdities you tell Jennifer that if her spine was broken during a frugivorous diet, you have an interpretation bias that "they must certainly have been doing something quite wrong or unreasonable, and are now mistaking a quick fix that will lead to long-term problems for a solution" before you even have the details of her diet,

That's not an "absurdity" at all, but as I explained previously entirely reasonable on my part. From my perspective, that is simply the most reasonable explanation based on my own knowledge and experience, despite not knowing the exact details. That's neither absurd nor contradictory.

and you certainly don't agree with the notion that a human (and Jennifer) needs animal protein to be healthy, and that she could have restored her health without it with other changes

Correct. I don't believe any human needs animal matter at all to attain as optimal health as possible, apart from perhaps places like where Inuits live, where anything else is impossible, and the optimal level of health accessible to them is low in absolute terms.

when you yourself have never been optimally healthy on a frugivorous diet, considering that you take supplements

At this point it's rather humorous how you keep repeating this even though I've addressed it twice already. Again, when other great apes engage in geophagy, are they "supplementing" their diet, as primatologists describe them as doing? And e.g. D3 is impossible to get enough of without abundant sunlight, and must be supplemented for optimal health regardless of dietary specifics. You continue neglecting my actual explanations to keep pushing the same claims I've already thoroughly refuted.

Also, what I'm talking about when I'm talking about optimal health is the optimal level of health attainable with whatever resources you have access to, something I've also explicitly told you at least twice already. For some reason, you seem to keep ignoring this.

at this point your speech is already a "memes"

Given how you keep avoiding anything of substance and at this point are just repeating the same things I've already addressed over and over, I'd say this is a more apt description of what you are doing than what I'm doing.

Jennifer is speaking from her own experience, you are contradicting her with theories that have not been confirmed by your own experiences

Again, as described previously and above, this is total nonsense, and I've explained why in great detail.

this is probably one of the reasons why she stopped talking to you

It is anyone's prerogative to stop responding whenever they like, obviously. No one is forcing anyone to answer under duress.

you are telling someone who has more experience than you on a subject

I strongly doubt that's true.

and who seems to be more intelligent than you

At this point you're getting quite ridiculous with your not-so-thinly veiled stabs. For what it's worth, I don't think that's true either, but this isn't an intelligence contest anyway.

that you assume she must have done things wrong before you have the evidence,

Yes, and there's nothing absurd or contradictory about that, as explained over and over again.

like just your use of the word "need" in this context shows that your intelligence could be much higher.

Well, I'm rubber, and your glue; everything bounces off me, and sticks to you. Are you going to keep saying "you're stupid" instead of actually saying anything of substance?

It's not my intention to hurt your feelings or your pride, so if you feel that what I'm telling you makes you want to respond with some toxicity, I recommend you don't respond

I mean, I've already made it clear that nothing you could possibly say could ever hurt my feelings. As for pride, nothing I'm saying is based on that, so that's just strange to bring up in this context.

When it comes to toxicity, it would be nearly impossible to match the levels of toxicity oozing from your posts so far, but I prefer to simply address everything in the same manner as elsewhere, not giving it any preferential treatment. This has sadly strayed far from the topic at this point, but as long as you keep trying to sling insults I'll likely reply and point it out, unless your posts devolve into pure flaming or trolling.

 

[LastingJoy]

The phrase "your intelligence level is not high enough" is synonymous with "you're stupid", no matter how gently you try to phrase it or explain it away. Trying to say that I'm projecting when you're just trying to phrase things in a contrived manner to maintain an air of superior sensitivity (which is long gone by now, as I hope you realize) is nothing short of ridiculous.

just this answer shows how much higher your intelligence could be, and why there is no interest answering to everything else you wrote if you can not understand simple things

"your intelligence level is not high enough" doesn't imply stupidity, you can be intelligent, just not intelligent enough for a certain context.


from my experience, you sound like the archetype of the vegan/frugivore with a too high degree of dogmatism,
i wish you the best in life, I hope you will reach a higher degree of clairvoyance/lucidity.

 

[philalethes]

just this answer shows how much higher your intelligence could be, and why there is no interest answering to everything else you wrote if you can not understand simple things

Right, more of "you're stupid" and hand-waving away what I write without any substance; can't say I didn't expect it.

Again, so far I've indicated that I do understand exactly what you're saying, and have addressed it correspondingly. You have not shown any such indication at all, so it seems to me that you're the one who is unable to "understand simple things" here.

"your intelligence level is not high enough" doesn't imply stupidity, you can be intelligent, just not intelligent enough for a certain context.

Again, anyone can see "you're stupid" no matter how much you try to obfuscate it. Also, again, so far you're the one who keeps ignoring what I write, ignoring my addresses of your repetitive fallacious claims, and at this point refusing to say anything substantial whatsoever.

from my experience, you sound like the archetype of the vegan/frugivore with a too high degree of dogmatism,

Except that nothing I'm saying is dogmatic; it's grounded in both personal experience and scientific evidence, literally the diametric opposite of dogmatism.

i wish you the best in life, I hope you will reach a higher degree of clairvoyance/lucidity.

I mean, it's just funny at this point how you can't help including a stab even when you try to make it appear as if you're wishing me well; "best wishes, hope you'll stop being a stupid moron!"

To me, it seems like you're the one who could use an increased level of lucidity, that way perhaps you wouldn't have to ignore most of what I write to keep stabbing away at it for no good reason.

 

[LastingJoy]

Right, more of "you're stupid" and hand-waving away what I write without any substance; can't say I didn't expect it.

Again, so far I've indicated that I do understand exactly what you're saying, and have addressed it correspondingly. You have not shown any such indication at all, so it seems to me that you're the one who is unable to "understand simple things" here.



Again, anyone can see "you're stupid" no matter how much you try to obfuscate it. Also, again, so far you're the one who keeps ignoring what I write, ignoring my addresses of your repetitive fallacious claims, and at this point refusing to say anything substantial whatsoever.



Except that nothing I'm saying is dogmatic; it's grounded in both personal experience and scientific evidence, literally the diametric opposite of dogmatism.



I mean, it's just funny at this point how you can't help including a stab even when you try to make it appear as if you're wishing me well; "best wishes, hope you'll stop being a stupid moron!"

To me, it seems like you're the one who could use an increased level of lucidity, that way perhaps you wouldn't have to ignore most of what I write to keep stabbing away at it for no good reason.

long life to you

 

[philalethes]

long life to you

Thank you, and likewise, although a long healthspan is arguably just as important as a long lifespan.

I personally hope to achieve this by eating in a manner that has both yielded me great results in terms of health and that is inspired by the longest-living populations on the planet, by the natural diets eaten by our closest relative species where we evolved, and by the large body of accumulated scientific evidence available to humanity in this day and age of information we find ourselves in, including much of Ray Peat's work; I hope you will maximize your chances for both a long healthspan and a long lifespan in a similar manner, and live a long and prosperous life.

 

[Jennifer]

Thank you, @LastingJoy. :)

 

[Tenacity]

@philalethes What are animal products doing physiologically/biochemically that make them harmful for health?

 

[LastingJoy]

Thank you, and likewise, although a long healthspan is arguably just as important as a long lifespan.

I personally hope to achieve this by eating in a manner that has both yielded me great results in terms of health and that is inspired by the longest-living populations on the planet, by the natural diets eaten by our closest relative species where we evolved, and by the large body of accumulated scientific evidence available to humanity in this day and age of information we find ourselves in, including much of Ray Peat's work; I hope you will maximize your chances for both a long healthspan and a long lifespan in a similar manner, and live a long and prosperous life.

Decent tale, i hope the positive affirmation will be beneficial to you,

thanks you for the wish

 

[philalethes]

Decent tale, i hope the positive affirmation will be beneficial to you,

thanks you for the wish

Thankfully it's not a tale; that's the wonderful thing about reason and scientific evidence, it's the opposite of religion and other fairy tales, like "positive affirmations". What will hopefully benefit me and any others following both experience and evidence is luckily irrespective of ineffectual measures like prayer.

As for the wish of good health and long life, you're most welcome.

 

[philalethes]

@philalethes What are animal products doing physiologically/biochemically that make them harmful for health?

Well, we can go through some of the evidence and experiences I've gathered so far in my life, and although I'm aware of many commonly cited objections to them I haven't found them to hold.

We can take fish first, which just sounds like a terrible choice to include in the diet of a frugivorous great ape like a human for many reasons. There's the obvious fact that as Ray notes, fish are typically very high in PUFAs in order to be able to swim in the cold temperatures of the waters they live in, but they also contain high levels of trimethylamine N-oxide, the cause of the infamous smell of rotting fish, and known to be associated with a wide variety of deleterious effects in humans. In addition, they are known to accumulate high levels of toxic heavy metals like mercury even in pristine waters (less so for smaller fish, but still; and that is a problem for filter-feeders like various shellfish too). Like other animals, they are frequently riddled with parasites too. From the perspective of our evolution in the tropical equatorial rainforest, we would not have had much access to such at all; it would be possible to catch some in nearby bodies of water or if the water receded somewhere to reveal a stranded fish, but great apes generally shun water (although humans are probably the apes which understand and enjoy water the most).

Next up we can consider other meats, including "red" meats like beef or "white" meat like chicken. While there are some important distinctions between them, there are also many similarities. In general I simply consider these to in general be relatively poor sources of nutrition, as several of the few nutrients commonly touted as the biggest benefits of such are double-edged. The two most prominent such nutrients would be the protein and the iron. The protein however is very high in sulfuric amino acids, particularly methionine and cysteine, whose restriction in humans is known to lead to increased healthspans and lifespans. If the protein is derived from muscle tissue you'd also be looking at a lot of phosphorus. The iron on the other hand is in the form of heme-iron, which is commonly claimed to be much easier to absorb than the mineral iron found in plant-based sources, but I believe that's looking at things backwards; it's rather that heme-iron is so similar to the iron in our own blood that the body doesn't have as good mechanisms for regulating its absorption, which leads to far too much of it being absorbed and to chronic iron overload which often goes undiagnosed, in turn leading to increased oxidative stress all over the body and increased susceptibility to e.g. sunburn and various intestinal cancers. The same argument can also be made for preformed vitamin A (retinol/retinal), which is also present in certain tissues, like the liver of many animals; this is also known to have the potential to be quite toxic, and I suspect that's because humans haven't really evolved the proper regulatory mechanisms for it, and that we're rather optimized to convert the provitamin A carotenoids we'd naturally get from fruits and leafy greens (where such carotenoids are abundant), and even people with low conversion rates that are often pointed to by proponents of consuming liver generally always convert more than enough from plant-based sources. Next you could go into the dilemma between whether or not to cook the flesh, since raw meat is known to carry a variety of risks, but cooking it is known to cause the formation of various carcinogenic toxins like HCAs and AGEs, leaving you between a rock and a hard place. There's also the entire issue of Neu5Gc in red meat in particular, which is a unique problem to humans due to how the CMAH gene was deactivated in the human-specific lineage, which has been found to cause chronic inflammation in humans when incorporated into our tissues from exogenous sources (see the paper From “Serum Sickness” to “Xenosialitis”: Past, Present, and Future Significance of the Non-human Sialic Acid Neu5Gc for more on this). I personally noted significantly less inflammation the less meat I ate, all the way down to zero.

As for dairy, it should immediately be somewhat suspect, since we're talking about the breast milk of another mammal, one designed to get a calf so addicted to suckling on its mother's teats that it will grow ~200+ kg in a single year at that in the case of bovine breast milk, but also signal for the actual growth, which can cause a lot of growth-related complications in humans, including musculoskeletal disorders and cancers. For example, Netherlands is known for their freakishly tall people (which is actually a quite recent development historically), and they also happen to have one of the highest rates of dairy consumption in the world, as well as in Europe itself where such consumption is already high in many places; they also happen to have among the highest rates of cancers in general, and conspicuously among the highest breast cancer rates in the world. I know from my experience back in the day drinking several liters of cow milk every single day that after years of doing it my breast tissue became increasingly swollen and tender (I am a man), and I could almost swear that I could sometimes feel a certain wetness as if I were lactating. It also caused me a host of other issues, including an almost permanent sinus infection that disappeared when I quit it, and gastrointestinal problems as well. A lot of phlegm and mucus in general. Note that this last part is anecdotal evidence. All in all, I think there are very good reasons why mammals wean at a certain age and don't drink any more milk past that stage, opting instead for the diets to which their physiologies are best suited.

Lastly we have eggs. I would argue that of all the animal products mentioned, this is the most natural alternative in many ways, since this is something both we and our closest relative species would occasionally come across while walking around in the forest or climbing around in the trees over the past tens of millions of years. Still I don't think it would have been a regular enough occurrence for our bodies to have significant adaptations towards it, since our diet would always have been so heavily dominated by plant-based sources, and we see even today that chimpanzees and orangutans do not really consume eggs very often at all (gorillas virtually never, since they are much more confined to the ground). Nutritionally speaking, they are also quite high in sulfuric amino acids just as meats generally are, they have a similar fatty acid composition to avocado without the fatty acid oxidation inhibitors to mitigate the PUFAs, and they also contain significant amounts of choline, which is linked to being converted into trimethylamine in the gut (perhaps no surprise that rotten eggs and rotten fish are both considered to be among the worst smells people frequently associate with foods). On a more contentious note they also contain significant amounts of exogenous cholesterol, which meats also do, and considering how the body seems to be perfectly capable of making all its own cholesterol from carbohydrate substrates without a problem (the brain in fact relying entirely on this for all its cholesterol), I'd be wary of this as well, although I'm perfectly aware that this is something a lot of people would object to. For me personally, for another anecdote, they are just highly constipating and feel like they're reducing my metabolism. I see no reason to eat them personally, and don't think there's anything beneficial about them that can't easily be derived with fewer to no negatives from foods I consider to be more suitable for human physiology, which are all plant-derived.

 

[xeliex]

Thank you, @LastingJoy. :)

Hi! I lol'd.

 

[Jennifer]

Hi! I lol'd.

LOL Bless LastingJoy’s heart. I feel so bad that they got involved in that back and forth. I should never have mentioned my spine collapsing because I knew what I was dealing with.

 

[Blossom]

LOL Bless LastingJoy’s heart. I feel so bad that they got involved in that back and forth. I should never have mentioned my spine collapsing because I knew what I was dealing with.

Our beloved Ray highly valued knowledge from personal experience. I for one have the utmost respect for your bravery in experimenting, challenging the things you thought were true, discovering what your body needed to heal and especially for sharing your experience.

 

[philalethes]

Our beloved Ray highly valued knowledge from personal experience. I for one have the utmost respect for your bravery in experimenting, challenging the things you thought were true, discovering what your body needed to heal and especially for sharing your experience.

The value of personal experience should definitely not be underestimated, something I've made sure to emphasize; but Ray also held scientific evidence in high esteem.

A great example Ray often used to illustrate what my point has been in this regard was how omega-3 fatty acids would act as potent immunosuppresants. This would give people who ingested them an immediate feeling of relief, much like how opiates give relief from pain without fixing the underlying cause of the pain, despite how they'd be greatly detrimental to health.

Thus I maintain that one should be careful not to hastily conclude that something which works to fix a problem is necessarily the only or best solution, nor that it doesn't come with its own unforeseen consequences in the longer run.

 

[Blossom]

The value of personal experience should definitely not be underestimated, something I've made sure to emphasize; but Ray also held scientific evidence in high esteem.

A great example Ray often used to illustrate what my point has been in this regard was how omega-3 fatty acids would act as potent immunosuppresants. This would give people who ingested them an immediate feeling of relief, much like how opiates give relief from pain without fixing the underlying cause of the pain, despite how they'd be greatly detrimental to health.

Thus I maintain that one should be careful not to hastily conclude that something which works to fix a problem is necessarily the only or best solution, nor that it doesn't come with its own unforeseen consequences in the longer run.

Yes, he was great at balancing both. A true inspiration for us all. I also think at times we need different inputs depending on what is going on with our physiology and environment. I’ve been here long enough to notice one specific diet does not work for everyone and even at the individual level we must remain mindful and willing to adapt to changes.