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

[philalethes]

Yes, he was great at balancing both. A true inspiration for us all.

Absolutely, he was no doubt a great person.

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.

I only partially agree with this, but probably not with the general sentiment. The genetic differences between humans all across the planet are simply too small to expect any significant differences in physiological adaptation; there is, as I believe I mentioned in passing previously, less genetic variation across almost all humans than there is within even single populations of our closest relative species, and those of other primates. The cause for this is still discussed, but the most commonly cited reason is typically some genetic bottleneck that happened around the time we migrated out of Africa (which also explains why there is significantly more genetic variation in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa). It would likely take many millions of years for subspecies of humans with so significantly different physiologies that they'd have different underlying dietary needs to appear, but given the increased levels of global contact between individuals I'd say the trend seems to go in the other direction, towards more homogeneity. We're essentially becoming one single population more and more if we look at it historically.

Thus while I can partially agree that one should perhaps be careful when reintroducing a more physiologically suitable diet if one has been eating in other ways, so as to not make any too sudden changes, I don't agree that this is dependent on environment or physiology; this is perhaps most notable when looking at Inuits, which I mentioned previously, and how they see rapid population-wide increases in health when they gain access to more carbohydrate-rich foods due to trade/importation.

 

[Blossom]

Absolutely, he was no doubt a great person.



I only partially agree with this, but probably not with the general sentiment. The genetic differences between humans all across the planet are simply too small to expect any significant differences in physiological adaptation; there is, as I believe I mentioned in passing previously, less genetic variation across almost all humans than there is within even single populations of our closest relative species, and those of other primates. The cause for this is still discussed, but the most commonly cited reason is typically some genetic bottleneck that happened around the time we migrated out of Africa (which also explains why there is significantly more genetic variation in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa). It would likely take many millions of years for subspecies of humans with so significantly different physiologies that they'd have different underlying dietary needs to appear, but given the increased levels of global contact between individuals I'd say the trend seems to go in the other direction, towards more homogeneity. We're essentially becoming one single population more and more if we look at it historically.

Thus while I can partially agree that one should perhaps be careful when reintroducing a more physiologically suitable diet if one has been eating in other ways, so as to not make any too sudden changes, I don't agree that this is dependent on environment or physiology; this is perhaps most notable when looking at Inuits, which I mentioned previously, and how they see rapid population-wide increases in health when they gain access to more carbohydrate-rich foods due to trade/importation.

I think you and I are just very different in our perspectives which makes perfect sense considering your background. I obviously can’t converse intelligently with you on subjects of evolution and genetics. I’m not a scientist. I’ve been eaten both a vegan diet (which for the record I definitely did incorrectly) and a carnivore diet (not that it matters) for a period of years. I’ve completely stopped thinking that I have any clue what other people should eat. I’m happy you feel confident that you’ve figured it all out though. The carnivore community makes similar arguments quite convincingly, for example this guy Miki Ben-Dor but I personally don’t have confidence in what most people write about diet from the evolutionary perspective. So you and I are just different and that’s fine. As unscientific as it is I also believe strongly in prayer and the help it provides me in getting clear insights and guidance on how to proceed in matters of my personal life so you and I will certainly find difficulty conversing about diet. I honestly really don’t care what other primates eat tbh. I mean no offense, it’s just not my thing.

 

[philalethes]

I think you and I are just very different in our perspectives which makes perfect sense considering your background. I obviously can’t converse intelligently with you on subjects of evolution and genetics. I’m not a scientist. I’ve been eaten both a vegan diet (which for the record I definitely did incorrectly) and a carnivore diet (not that it matters) for a period of years. I’ve completely stopped thinking that I have any clue what other people should eat. I’m happy you feel confident that you’ve figured it all out though. The carnivore community makes similar arguments quite convincingly, for example this guy Miki Ben-Dor but I personally don’t have confidence in what most people write about diet from the evolutionary perspective. So you and I are just different and that’s fine. As unscientific as it is I also believe strongly in prayer and the help it provides me in getting clear insights and guidance on how to proceed in matters of my personal life so you and I will certainly find difficulty conversing about diet. I honestly really don’t care what other primates eat tbh. I mean no offense, it’s just not my thing.

Well, it's certainly perfectly fine to be different, but that doesn't mean everyone and everything should be considered equally reasonable.

I will at least mention, since you bring it up, that I particularly don't agree with the notion of "people argue different things, so therefore we can't find out the truth at all"; I don't think that's conducive to making progress in human knowledge. Even though the scientific process takes time, it's almost impossible in our day and age to ignore what a tremendous amount of knowledge we have accumulated collectively. With the ease of access to such evidence there's no necessity to "be a scientist", whatever that means (by profession or otherwise). At the very least it should not be deterring anyone from looking into what evidence exists in terms of evolutionary biology and similar disciplines, and thinking about it critically on their own and discussing it with others. Otherwise you can quickly end up trapped in so-called "invincible ignorance", or making false compromises, all to avoid acknowledging certain positions as more factual and reasonable at the cost of having to discard others. For example, not caring what other primates eat at all when trying to find out what humans are likely most physiologically suited to eat, is in my view extremely unreasonable, especially considering the remarkable genetic similarity between us and the other great apes, and the striking physiological resemblance (and clear paleoanthropological evidence that we first appeared as a species right where they live).

 

[Jennifer]

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.

Thank you. I really appreciate your kind words and compassion. It’s so true that Ray valued knowledge from personal experience, and I sensed it from the time I first communicated with him. This thread has only deepened my respect for him.

 

[Korven]

Absolutely, he was no doubt a great person.



I only partially agree with this, but probably not with the general sentiment. The genetic differences between humans all across the planet are simply too small to expect any significant differences in physiological adaptation; there is, as I believe I mentioned in passing previously, less genetic variation across almost all humans than there is within even single populations of our closest relative species, and those of other primates. The cause for this is still discussed, but the most commonly cited reason is typically some genetic bottleneck that happened around the time we migrated out of Africa (which also explains why there is significantly more genetic variation in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa). It would likely take many millions of years for subspecies of humans with so significantly different physiologies that they'd have different underlying dietary needs to appear, but given the increased levels of global contact between individuals I'd say the trend seems to go in the other direction, towards more homogeneity. We're essentially becoming one single population more and more if we look at it historically.

Thus while I can partially agree that one should perhaps be careful when reintroducing a more physiologically suitable diet if one has been eating in other ways, so as to not make any too sudden changes, I don't agree that this is dependent on environment or physiology; this is perhaps most notable when looking at Inuits, which I mentioned previously, and how they see rapid population-wide increases in health when they gain access to more carbohydrate-rich foods due to trade/importation.

Not completely sure why I feel compelled to get involved in this thread, but anyways I'm going to.

You do realize people have different dietary needs not just due to small genetic differences, but due to things that happen throughout life? What if someone has had a hernia surgical mesh installed and that causes most dietary fiber from fruits and vegetables to cause tremendous amounts of pain? Should that individual eat bananas and dates and suffer because it is the diet we are most physiologically adapted to? What if I have a colostomy bag and don't want a bunch of fiber clogging up the damn thing all the time, in that case maybe a low-residue carnivore diet is a better solution to improve quality of life? What if I am allergic to most fruits and vegetables? What if I don't have access to them, or can't afford them? What if I have hereditary fructose intolerance, like @tca300, and the liver is unable to metabolize fruit sugar? That was just a few examples, I could give you 1000 more examples of why fruits and vegetables may not work for an individual.

In the real world people are vastly different with vastly different needs, for many different reasons. Considering this fact, don't you think it sounds a little naive that we should all thrive on a diet of exclusively fruit and leaves? Why do essentially all fruitarians wither away and look sickly -- I know, I know, they did it wrong, but what about those that did it right?

I don't even mind the discussion whether a frugivore diet is optimal for human health or not, I am sure it for some individuals, just like a carnivore diet is optimal for another individual. Cheers mate!

 

[Jamsey]

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:





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.



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:



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:



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



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):



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).

Hm ok so in my statement, I implied that compared to proteinaceous vegetable matter, animal products are easier to digest and absorb, leading to greater muscle mass and larger brains. In response you argued,
-Leaves, fruits and legumes have protein
-Young and wild plants have more protein and less anti nutrients than old, farmed plants
-Chimps eat leaves
-Humans can cook and process plants for eating
While I agree with these statements, none of them even remotely refute my point. Compared with animal products, even optimally cooked and processed young plants will still be harder to digest for the same amount of absorbable protein.
Now if you want to argue against that, be my guest. But please don’t spend another fifteen paragraphs derailing the argument into some other nonsense.

 

[philalethes]

You do realize people have different dietary needs not just due to small genetic differences, but due to things that happen throughout life? What if someone has had a hernia surgical mesh installed and that causes most dietary fiber from fruits and vegetables to cause tremendous amounts of pain? Should that individual eat bananas and dates and suffer because it is the diet we are most physiologically adapted to?

Such a situation has nothing to do with what's optimal physiologically. I've never said anything to the effect that someone in such a situation shouldn't adapt correspondingly, but such a person should expect to achieve a much lower level of absolute health than otherwise, much like we see in Inuits, who historically have been forced into a similar position for environmental reasons.

What if I have a colostomy bag and don't want a bunch of fiber clogging up the damn thing all the time, in that case maybe a low-residue carnivore diet is a better solution to improve quality of life?

See above for parts of my address to this, but I would also dispute the notion that a "carnivore diet" can really be called a low-residue diet due to how many of the residues from meat and other animal products can get dispersed throughout the body without ending up in such a bag (e.g. accumulations of excess heme-iron, accumulations of Neu5Gc bound to cell glycans, fats and toxic fat metabolites causing insulin resistance, and so on). In that case it's certainly to some extent a practical concern, but I would definitely not personally sacrifice my own health just to avoid dealing with the fiber; fiber, more specfically the soluble fiber found in fresh and ripe fruits and in well-cooked vegetables (or very tender raw ones), is extremely important to maintain good digestive health.

What if I am allergic to most fruits and vegetables?

The problem with that reasoning is the countless cases I'm aware of of people believing themselves to be just that with varying degrees of confidence, but then finding out they're not at all once they've restored proper digestive health. The biochemistry of how physiologically suitable foods react with a body that's been subject to much less suitable foods for a long time can be extreme unpredictable, hence my mention earlier of how people should certainly make sure to make such changes over time, but still make sure to make them in the right direction.

What if I don't have access to them, or can't afford them?

I addressed this multiple times previously in this thread; this even applies to myself, as I would e.g. eat a far larger amount of incredible Chaunsa mangoes from Pakistan if it were more affordable, and even buy luxurious imports of other tropical fruits in as ripe and fresh a state as possible. This also applies to the aforementioned Inuits, and also still to many people living at extreme latitudes who don't have good access to even e.g. cheap dates or bananas. Under such circumstances, you obviously can't expect someone to do anything other than make do with what they can, but there's a big difference between this and continuing to do it even when more physiologically foods become so available that they're even more affordable; and that's not even considering long-term environmental impacts, as we've seen worldwide, very much in contrast to notions of "regenerative agriculture", where e.g. grazing tends to decimate soil quality over time, something which can cause problems for entire populations.

What if I have hereditary fructose intolerance, like @tca300, and the liver is unable to metabolize fruit sugar?

Same as above addresses, I'm obviously not claiming that someone in that situation should kill themselves by continuing to ingest fructose, and I've never said anything to that effect; note also that this is an extremely rare recessive genetic disorder, and not representative at all for the human genome.

That was just a few examples, I could give you 1000 more examples of why fruits and vegetables may not work for an individual.

Feel free to continue; the examples so far have been very poor in making any good point against anything I'm saying at all. In situations where access is the problem, this is something I've already accounted for, and situations where actual physiology is the problem are so rare that it's still reasonable for me to assume what I'm assuming. If e.g. the person you mention above were to discuss with me how they got certain health problems from eating fruit, I would reasonably assume other causes first, because jumping directly to a rare genetic disease is not reasonable.

In the real world people are vastly different with vastly different needs, for many different reasons.

Nothing I've said has contradicted this very general and broad statement.

Considering this fact, don't you think it sounds a little naive that we should all thrive on a diet of exclusively fruit and leaves?

First of all, that's not exactly what I've said. Such a diet would perhaps be possible with abundant access to fresh and ripe tropical fruits and young and tender leaves if both are semi-wild, but even then you'd likely want some other types of vegetable matter for optimal health; what I'm advocating is to consume a wide variety of non-fruit vegetable matter far beyond just those types, in order to better emulate the variety of food we've been eating for tens of millions of years, and also to cook a lot of that vegetable matter to emulate the bioavailability of nutrients typically found in more energetically favorable environments like the tropics (the less energy is available to plants, the more they tend to defend their component parts with antinutritious substances).

Secondly, however, my actual point is that I do indeed believe, based on both experience and scientific evidence, that humans are all so physiologically similar that we would indeed do best health-wise on a diet consisting exclusively of fresh and ripe fruit and easily digestible vegetables, barring extreme abnormalities like the ones you list above (which again are not reasonable to account for when making the general case, even though they do exist). I don't think that's a naive statement whatsoever.

Why do essentially all fruitarians wither away and look sickly -- I know, I know, they did it wrong, but what about those that did it right?

Well, I've never personally used the term "fruitarian" throughout this entire thread (apart from just now, in quotation marks), because to me that denotes an ideological stance, much like "vegan", and has very little to do with human physiology in and of itself. My experience is that many people who identify themselves as such tend to have certain ideological beliefs, and often some very strange dietary dogmas and eating disorders, such as e.g. an obsession with exclusively eating raw foods, or exclusively eating fruits and eschewing all non-fruit vegetable foods. All of that being said, I strongly doubt that "essentially all" such people wither away and look sickly, to my knowledge this equally extreme opposite position is typically inspired by borderline propaganda efforts to cherry-pick the most blatant cases of eating disorders and misconstruing the actual causes. At least I'm aware of a lot of people who identify themselves as such, but who have much more reasonable attitudes to food, and who don't wither away or look sickly at all, but thrive and look very well.

I don't even mind the discussion whether a frugivore diet is optimal for human health or not, I am sure it for some individuals, just like a carnivore diet is optimal for another individual. Cheers mate!

The way this is phrased makes it sound like both are equally reasonable on average, which is rather ridiculous given everything we know about what foods lead to the longest and healthiest lives. The number of people on the planet for whom a "carnivore diet" would actually be optimal given their circumstances is probably a minuscule fraction, and mostly restricted to people who have literally zero access to any plant-based foods whatsoever; and for those people, that relatively "optimal" health would be extremely low in absolute terms.

In any case, I freely welcome discussion and statements, so cheers to you as well; there's nothing to shy away from here.

 

[aniciete]

 

[philalethes]

Hm ok so in my statement, I implied that compared to proteinaceous vegetable matter, animal products are easier to digest and absorb, leading to greater muscle mass and larger brains.

It was not clear exactly what you implied by your statement, but my argument against those claims is:

1) being easier to digest and absorb can backfire, such as e.g. with heme-iron and preformed vitamin A being too easy to absorb and accumulating and causing toxicity, and also that foods that are seemingly easier to digest and absorb can lead to accumulations throughout the body that aren't immediately noticeable and can cause problems in the long run,

2) only perhaps in the most extreme cases where you're trying to gain muscle at the rate of a professional bodybuilder, which needless to say is extremely unhealthy (the countless health problems of bodybuilders and professional athletes in general are well-documented), would certain animal proteins be the only ones that could achieve such a response (after all, e.g. milk proteins are designed to grow a calf 200+ kg in the first year of life, and promote all sorts of growth factors), but that doesn't mean that this is desirable in any way, shape, or form when it comes to optimal health, nor that you cannot build and maintain muscle at a much more natural rate with vegetable proteins, which you absolutely can, and

3) the idea that animal products lead to larger brains is provably nonsense, and at this point it's rather egregious that there are so many popular books maintaining such claims; as I've stated many times throughout this thread we know that it's the degree of fruit intake which is associated with brain size in primates, and given how the brain makes all its own cholesterol from sugar and needs large quantities of both sugar and antioxidative secondary active metabolites to function optimally it's quite obvious to see why this is the case, and why it has very little to do with protein (the brain contains significantly less protein per unit of weight than muscle tissue, and has really never been the limiting factor for brain growth at all).

In response you argued,
-Leaves, fruits and legumes have protein
-Young and wild plants have more protein and less anti nutrients than old, farmed plants
-Chimps eat leaves
-Humans can cook and process plants for eating
While I agree with these statements, none of them even remotely refute my point. Compared with animal products, even optimally cooked and processed young plants will still be harder to digest for the same amount of absorbable protein.

The point was that you were making it out as if protein absorption rate or percentage is or has ever been a limiting factor for vegetable proteins when it comes to muscle growth, which simply isn't the case. My point was that vegetable foods contain plenty of protein and can easily completely satisfy protein needs. That's a perfectly adequate response to your assumption that animal proteins would in any way be beneficial for muscles (again, unless you're trying to gain muscle mass at an abnormally fast and unhealthy rate) or brain; when I said that a simple enzyme-based digestive system was indeed beneficial for our brains, that was primarily because I had already made it clear how it's sugar and antioxidants as found in fruits that are the crucial and limiting components of brain growth and maintenance.

Now if you want to argue against that, be my guest. But please don’t spend another fifteen paragraphs derailing the argument into some other nonsense.

I did nothing of the sort; if you don't want me to go into detail addressing your fallacious reasoning, then please feel free to not provide it. What I addressed was absolutely to the point, due to your assumption that vegetable proteins would somehow be a limiting factor, which it never has been due to how abundantly available protein has been for most of human evolution, as explained through how our closest relative species derive their protein and build and maintain their rather impressive physiques. In fact, the most prized component of meat has always been the fat rather than the protein, primarily due to its energy density, which is typically always the limiting factor for organisms, and why we've developed such a high degree of frugivory to overcome those metabolic constraints.

I've also mentioned how abundant intake of carbohydrate is extremely protein-sparing, both in terms of preserving proteins that would otherwise be used for energy and in terms of aiding in recycling proteins. In fact there are several studies on highlanders in Papua New-Guinea that show that they are able to consistently keep their nitrogen balance positive and build muscle and maintain impressive physiques with as little as ~30 grams of protein per day on average, due to their very high consumption of carbohydrate in the form of foods like sweet potato and bananas. I don't advocate a protein intake just that low, but it's a great piece of evidence regardless for how protein itself is very rarely a limiting factor for anything.

 

[Korven]

Arguments for the Chimp diet

I'll grant you the point that accessibility to food doesn't matter when it comes to determining what is strictly healthy or not.

I can't help but feel that you have constructed a logical framework where all potential flaws with "the Chimp diet" (*the diet you described above) can be explained away by either a) rare physiological defects that are 'not reasonable to account for' or b) the individual did your version of "the Chimp diet" wrong, e.g. they ate too little fruit, they ate too much fruit, or they ate too little variety of fruits and vegetables, or they were too dogmatic about only eating raw and should have cooked their food instead, or they didn't take the right supplements in the right ratios to replicate a tropical climate, and so on.

My point was that there are MANY real life scenarios where fruits and vegetables are not a great idea (they cause pain and suffering for whatever reason), and/or animal products have desirable properties that are health-promoting (they bring about good health). I could list 1000 more examples but it would be a pain in the **** to do. What about for instance taking antibiotics which totally wipes out oxalate-degrading bacteria and there is no way of getting them back? That is not a super rare occurrence and eliminates many plant foods as a source of sustenance. What about hypothyroid people that get SIBO-like symptoms from including too much fiber in their diet? When you add up all of these "abnormalities", genetic or environmentally-induced, you have a sizeable group of people that don't react well to fruits and vegetables, which makes "the Chimp diet" a poor fit for these individuals, and perhaps a carnivore diet a much better fit. I don't even like the carnivore diet personally for several reasons, but I see how it can be health-promoting in certain contexts, at least for a period of time.

Sorry to drag you back into this discussion again Jennifer, but she is a perfect example of how "the Chimp diet" had disastrous results and I can assure you she did all iterations of the diet perfect. Your only response seems to be 'you did it wrong' or 'something is wrong you with' which IMO is lazy and dodging the around the issue that "the Chimp diet" simply doesn't work for everyone.

 

[Korven]

View attachment 49301

 

[Jamsey]

It was not clear exactly what you implied by your statement, but my argument against those claims is:

1) being easier to digest and absorb can backfire, such as e.g. with heme-iron and preformed vitamin A being too easy to absorb and accumulating and causing toxicity, and also that foods that are seemingly easier to digest and absorb can lead to accumulations throughout the body that aren't immediately noticeable and can cause problems in the long run,

2) only perhaps in the most extreme cases where you're trying to gain muscle at the rate of a professional bodybuilder, which needless to say is extremely unhealthy (the countless health problems of bodybuilders and professional athletes in general are well-documented), would certain animal proteins be the only ones that could achieve such a response (after all, e.g. milk proteins are designed to grow a calf 200+ kg in the first year of life, and promote all sorts of growth factors), but that doesn't mean that this is desirable in any way, shape, or form when it comes to optimal health, nor that you cannot build and maintain muscle at a much more natural rate with vegetable proteins, which you absolutely can, and

3) the idea that animal products lead to larger brains is provably nonsense, and at this point it's rather egregious that there are so many popular books maintaining such claims; as I've stated many times throughout this thread we know that it's the degree of fruit intake which is associated with brain size in primates, and given how the brain makes all its own cholesterol from sugar and needs large quantities of both sugar and antioxidative secondary active metabolites to function optimally it's quite obvious to see why this is the case, and why it has very little to do with protein (the brain contains significantly less protein per unit of weight than muscle tissue, and has really never been the limiting factor for brain growth at all).



The point was that you were making it out as if protein absorption rate or percentage is or has ever been a limiting factor for vegetable proteins when it comes to muscle growth, which simply isn't the case. My point was that vegetable foods contain plenty of protein and can easily completely satisfy protein needs. That's a perfectly adequate response to your assumption that animal proteins would in any way be beneficial for muscles (again, unless you're trying to gain muscle mass at an abnormally fast and unhealthy rate) or brain; when I said that a simple enzyme-based digestive system was indeed beneficial for our brains, that was primarily because I had already made it clear how it's sugar and antioxidants as found in fruits that are the crucial and limiting components of brain growth and maintenance.



I did nothing of the sort; if you don't want me to go into detail addressing your fallacious reasoning, then please feel free to not provide it. What I addressed was absolutely to the point, due to your assumption that vegetable proteins would somehow be a limiting factor, which it never has been due to how abundantly available protein has been for most of human evolution, as explained through how our closest relative species derive their protein and build and maintain their rather impressive physiques. In fact, the most prized component of meat has always been the fat rather than the protein, primarily due to its energy density, which is typically always the limiting factor for organisms, and why we've developed such a high degree of frugivory to overcome those metabolic constraints.

I've also mentioned how abundant intake of carbohydrate is extremely protein-sparing, both in terms of preserving proteins that would otherwise be used for energy and in terms of aiding in recycling proteins. In fact there are several studies on highlanders in Papua New-Guinea that show that they are able to consistently keep their nitrogen balance positive and build muscle and maintain impressive physiques with as little as ~30 grams of protein per day on average, due to their very high consumption of carbohydrate in the form of foods like sweet potato and bananas. I don't advocate a protein intake just that low, but it's a great piece of evidence regardless for how protein itself is very rarely a limiting factor for anything.

Okay let’s break down what you claim.

1) “Animal products are too digestible and too absorbable, leading to accumulations of vitamin a and iron.”

This is an interesting argument to make. Let’s examine 30g of protein from some animal products vs spinach.
Beef: iron 3.1mg, vitamin a 3.6 ug
Chicken: iron 1mg, vitamin a 8.6 ug
Pork: iron 1.3mg, vitamin a ~0
Cod: iron .6mg, vitamin a 18.5 ug
Turkey: iron .7mg, vitamin a 3 ug
Spinach: iron 28.5mg, vitamin a 4922 ug
Let’s take into account absorption rates of 30% iron from meat, 2% iron from spinach, let’s assume 100% a from meat, and 3% vitamin a from spinach. I was generous with this as well, considering these are raw absorption rates and many people cook vegetables prior to eating.
Implied absorption:
Beef: iron .93mg, vitamin a 3.6ug
Chicken: iron .3mg, vitamin a 8.6ug
Pork: iron .39mg, vitamin a 0ug
Cod: iron .18mg, vitamin a 18.5ug
Turkey: iron .21mg, vitamin a 3ug
Spinach: iron .57mg, vitamin a 147.66ug
Or in other words, most animal products have less absorbable iron and vitamin a than this proteinaceous leaf.
And I’m not even taking into account all the phytoestrogens, oxalates, nitrates, trypsin inhibitors, lectins and other anti nutrients that one would “accumulate” from raw and even cooked plants.

2) “Plant protein is adequate for muscle mass and animal protein ‘grows muscle at an unnatural rate.’”

I don’t disagree that plant protein can be used to build muscle. But, there is a difference between something being possible and something being optimal. The evidence is clear that animal protein is more bio available (Determinants of amino acid bioavailability from ingested... : Current Opinion in Clinical Nutrition & Metabolic Care),
has better cellular uptake (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jafc.2c01711),
and is better at supporting lean mass (Animal Protein versus Plant Protein in Supporting Lean Mass and Muscle Strength: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials).
The claim that animal protein causes ‘unnatural muscle growth’ and that you can only grow muscle naturally with plant protein is somewhat ridiculous claim that is particularly arbitrary. There is nothing extreme about eating moderate amounts of animal protein.

3) “Meat has no effect on brain size, and it’s only fruit intake that does.”

I agree that easily digestible carbs paved the way to larger brain development. But it is clear from the statement “we have such large brains, precisely because we have a fairly simple enzyme-based digestive system” that you agree with the expensive tissue hypothesis and recognize that simple to digest foods paved the way to larger brains. Compared with animal protein, plant protein is clearly a less concentrated source, containing a lot of indigestible material, and ultimately causes an adaptive enlargement of the intestine. So, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that getting protein sources from animal products would make digestion easier and lead to a comparatively smaller intestine, leaving more energy for brain development.

4) “so more derailment about fat and nitrogen balance”

I never mentioned fat and the daily requirement for protein.

 

[Jonk]

@philalethes this thread has been an interesting read. I glossed over the "personal" back and forth so maybe not specifically those parts, but anyway. If you don't mind, how much protein do you think is generally required, and do you know of any plant sources that are more preferable than others? I know Peat spoke favorable of potatoes, but less so beans and lentils. I'm asking in the context of normal modern-day living humans with access to regular grocery stores.

 

[Jennifer]

Sorry to drag you back into this discussion again Jennifer, but she is a perfect example of how "the Chimp diet" had disastrous results and I can assure you she did all iterations of the diet perfect. Your only response seems to be 'you did it wrong' or 'something is wrong you with' which IMO is lazy and dodging the around the issue that "the Chimp diet" simply doesn't work for everyone.

It’s okay, Korven. :) You brought up many valid points, and I really appreciate you guys coming to my defense.

 

[Blossom]

View attachment 49301

May I ask this man’s name please?
Edit: never mind, I found it. He’s Michael Greger born in 1972. Based on appearances which I really don’t normally like to do I’m faring better as an omnivore at 3 years older than him.

 

[Blossom]

@philalethes

I suggest you read some scientific evidence, staring with You searched for Sarcopenia - Peter Attia and the other videos namely #224 ‒ Dietary protein: amount needed, ideal timing, quality, and more | Don Layman, Ph.D. - Peter Attia. The evidence is pretty clear.

As you mentioned in previous threads you won't know that you are correct until you reach old age of have a heath problem on the way. Until then it's your best guess.

In addition, I don't see you mentioning that you take labs every 3 or 6 months. If you can't measure it thn you have no idea what's going on with your health.

I second this recommendation. I listened to the Don Layman interview about a week ago and really appreciated his insights on the importance protein timing. He debunked intermittent fasting and explained why enough protein for breakfast and the evening meal are crucial for maintaining skeletal muscle mass. I really wasn’t aware of all that our skeletal muscle does to support us through the night before listening. He also explained why older people need as much protein as younger folks and not by percentage of calories but in actual grams per kg. It was very enlightening.

 

[Jennifer]

May I ask this man’s name please?
Edit: never mind, I found it. He’s Michael Greger born in 1972. Based on appearances which I really don’t normally like to do I’m faring better as an omnivore at 3 years older than him.

I have no idea who Anthony Chaffee is, but the video below appeared in my YouTube feed last night. I was shocked to find out that the rancher he’s interviewing is in her early 80s:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWdsEzx8F0

 

[Blossom]

I have no idea who Anthony Chaffee is, but the video below appeared in my YouTube feed last night. I was shocked to find out that the rancher he’s interviewing is in her early 80s:


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWdsEzx8F0

Oh, wow. She seems to be doing well!

 

[Jennifer]

Oh, wow. She seems to be doing well!

She sure does!

 

[Blossom]

She sure does!

Thanks so much for sharing the video. I just finished listening and it was excellent. I hope to be doing that well in my 80’s.