Homo Carnivorus

[Griffin NoName]

I wonder if they go back to some sort of misunderstood hunter gatherer diet (nuts, berries, eggs, the occasional meats) expecting to live longer, when our ancestor at that point rarely survived after 40.

Yes, the Paleolithic Diet is a real thing...  people are following it.  

They really are. The original link in the first post of this topic turned up in one of my (health) (doctor) specialists websites - she is recommending it to her patients.  

Yeah, V follows it religiously/sporadically (in between the others which have caught her eye). I like to think we've moved on *just* as bit since then...

We don't exactly live the way the Paleolithics did so why would we need the same diet? I mean, did they even know about ice cream?

It has finally happened. There's a documentary about someone I know on TV tonight (actually it has happened before now I think of it) - it's all about how she came to love palaeography (not the diet).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

They ate what they found and didn't die for it, or at least not all of them because the ones that couldn't deal with the diet died before having any offspring, in that context we are less likely to die from that diet before having children. If they died of -say- selenium poisoning from some of the nuts, they did so after having a baby. Does that mean that if we use the same diet we'll out live them? Absolutely not.

Isn't it lovely when people extrapolates data in a non qualified way? 

[pieces o nine]

I have managed to resist pointing out how much of the Official Paleo Diet must be, you know, trucked in to the Ocean o'Sand, and kept in refrigerated containers...

[Griffin NoName]

LoL@Pieces - bet that's hard.

^^ Zono. Lies, damned lies, and statistics.

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Then, there is the fortunate fact that we humans have figured out many of the things what killed us off at a too-early age.

And how to Not Do Those Things.

Of course, there are also Some Things We Must Do as well-- to keep living past 40ish.

For example, my dad's 80, and just had his first tooth pulled in his life (apart from wisdom teeth).  Pretty good, eh? 

My point here:  those paleolithopeople, most would've had little or no teeth by 40... let alone by 80...   and without teeth, it's darn difficult to chew your food properly.

[Aggie]

That's not all from lack of dental care, either...  a Stone-age diet wasn't as tender as what we're used to, and took some serious chewing.  Before fire and cooperative living, an elder wouldn't last long. Once you could grind and cook foods into porridge, probably life expectancy increased.   

I'm already a little concerned about my teeth from tackling heavy foods... I've hairline cracks in a few of them, and suspect my wear-patterns are heavier than typical for someone in my demographic group.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I told you to mash (not chew!) vegan bones, I know the marrow is good, but there is no need to damage your teeth that way. 

[Griffin NoName]

Dentures should be fashion items

[Sibling DavidH]

I thought they were.  Last Sunday one of our fellow charity workers came to lunch, and she took her hampsteads out to eat and put them back in afterwards (as usual).

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

Dentures should be fashion items

And why not?

Evolution has not given the human race very good teeth (on average):  far too much maintenance required and even then, the effort fails to preserve them until middle age.   Who among those past 20 can say they've never had a cavity?

That's a failure of epic proportions, considering the average life-span.

I say why not replace'em with a superior product?   

[Roland Deschain]

I am a proud omnivore. I love fruit, berries, nuts, and vegetables, but nothing adds that little extra something like meat and fish do. I could never be a vegetarian, and definitely not a vegan (Mmmm, cheese...). I love meat, and always have done, and will never give it up.

I can understand why someone may not want to be responsible for the suffering of an animal, but there are ways to acquire meat that gives little to no suffering to the animal. Modern abattoir practises are far better than they used to be, and as long as you stay away from Halal or Kosher meat, you'll probably be fine. Quick and painless is how we mostly go these days. Here is a link.

Mmmm, meat.

[Aggie]

I can understand why someone may not want to be responsible for the suffering of an animal, but there are ways to acquire meat that gives little to no suffering to the animal. Modern abattoir practises are far better than they used to be, and as long as you stay away from Halal or Kosher meat, you'll probably be fine. Quick and painless is how we mostly go these days. Here is a link.

Mmmm, meat.

Personally, it's how we treat the animals prior to slaughter that bothers me...  factory farming is total shite (which is why I'm buying a half of a pasture-raised pig this year from a farmer I've know since primary school - I'll probably go meet the pig at some point).  This little propaganda piece is a good overview:
[youtube=425,350]u4_pzPrMTrs[/youtube]

I also have no problem in principle with dhabihah or shechita (halal / kosher slaughter methods). Performed by experts, on a small scale, killing in this fashion would be less odious to me than mechanized mass-slaughter. The modern factory-slaghter interpretations of either are a different matter, as silly things start being done to maintain the prescriptions of the ritual that I can't see as being compatible with the "respect and compassion" due to the animal in both traditions.  

I don't put much overall stock in modern stunning methods; the rates of processing mean that such methods are statistically humane but also that there will be little accounting for statistically insignificant errors and inadequacies in the process.  In other words, if 95%* of the animals are dispatched humanely, the factory isn't going to worry much about the details in the 5% that aren't. In the context of us killing >50,000,000,000 animals globally per year for food (that's based on 2003 UN data, prior to the upswing in consumption in China and other Asian countries), the last few percent isn't an insignificant number of individuals. It's bloody huge. Furthermore, I tend to regard the necessity of stunning as a bit of a cover for inadequate kill methods.  If the kill is quick and humane, why the stun? (other than to make the animal easier to process and speed production).  
_{*number pulled out of thin air, although I tend to think it's rather optimistic. The link Roland posted seems to support this, under the cattle slaughter section.}

It's my ideal - which I have not been able to meet yet - that a responsible meat eater will have the honesty to personally ensure a natural life and humane death for the meat animals they eat, up to and including making the kill themselves. I grew up meat-hunting (we weren't out for sport, we were out to put venison on the table), and while I find killing distinctly unpleasant, I have no illusions that meat comes cheerfully from a meat-tree, pre-packed on a styrofoam tray. The wilful blindness we have as a culture to the production and processing methods that puts the meat on that styrofoam tray is more or less the reason that so much animal suffering is allowed to continue.

[Swatopluk]

... I have no illusions that meat comes cheerfully from a meat-tree, pre-packed on a styrofoam tray.

It's cardboard of course. Styrofoam did not evolve until much later.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_c4twH_sjx5o/RjeF-007YnI/AAAAAAAAAKM/0OW1hAtqD68/s320/oz_lunchbox.jpg
Btw, in the German translation the boxes are actually made from metal which makes more sense a few pages later.

[Roland Deschain]

Aggie, that really is a lot of animals suffering needlessly when you think of the full figures. I've never hunted for myself, and have not had the opportunity, the nearest to hunting being my dad catching a Dab from the beach at Great Yarmouth when I was 8/9, but I agree that shooting for sport is also needless. Nature is an incredibly brutal mistress, but we need not add to that brutality on such large scales. This is why I only buy free-range meat, and by free-range I mean the decent version. Battery farming is sickening.

[Griffin NoName]

Evolution has not given the human race very good teeth (on average):  far too much maintenance required and even then, the effort fails to preserve them until middle age.   Who among those past 20 can say they've never had a cavity?

I now have violent toothache..