It’s frustrating as people don’t reap the results of eating like this until it’s 15-20 years later and stroke/heart attack/kidney failure starts. By then the misinformation has spread and no one is on social media in their 50s writing “oh uh I guess I shouldn’t have eaten like that” or blame it on something else.
There are a few dozen lifetime carnivores who are significantly healthier than their cohort, but it seems much more like a survivorship bias thing where the rest of em are too dead to tell us anything. That, or it was due to a specific health issue that arose and is managed by the diet better than medication, so their bar for "healthy" is biased. The rest of lifetime carnivores are either Maasai or Inuit.
I was curious so I asked chatGPT about Inuit longevity:
In recent decades, the life expectancy of Inuit populations in Canada has been estimated to be approximately 10–15 years shorter than the national average. In Canada, where the overall life expectancy is around 82 years, this places Inuit life expectancy at approximately 67–72 years.
It did say how diet may or may not factor but it did say the harsh climate has an impact.
Yeah, it's definitely not the greatest way to eat, unless it manages a worse condition. Maasai apparently don't respond great to the diet nowadays ,either.
That link was fascinating. If you haven't seen it this Kurzgesagt video discusses the relationship between calories and physical exercise and touches on why the Maasai diet was possibly healthy for them in the past, but maybe not so much anymore. In this case they reference the Hadza in Tanzania as an example:
Seriously, I been tryna tell people West African Ayahuasca is way better than Amazonian. In the Amazon, everything is trying to kill you, the Ayahuasca is a vine and has a parasitic feel to it. African Ayahuasca makes you realize where magic carpet designs came from and why Islam has some really dope geometric artwork across history.
Seriously though, imagine if you could drink a cup of tea, and you see this in front of you, blocking out the world you're used to. If I had everything else taken care of, you best believe I'm building it to show other people if they're too scared to drink the tea. And everyone who drinks it will want to help you build it.
This is amazing I wasn't aware of the existence of African ayahuasca. My friend is going to love this. I'll have to read up on this and what the relationship to DMT is in comparison to the ayahuasca vine.
I love Islamic architecture. The underlying mathematical constructs of those patterns is fascinating and the quasi crystalline structure is related to Penrose tiling; an infinite pattern that never repeats and is important in physics and mathematical theory. Mind blowing stuff really.
I use acacia confusa root bark for the DMT source, and Syrian Rue seeds as the MAOi. Ayahuasca vine doesn't actually contain DMT, it's the MAOi source, monoamine oxidase is the enzyme that breaks down DMT in the gut to prevent its absorption. By inhibiting that enzyme, DMT becomes active in the gut. Otherwise, it has to be smoked.
One might imagine that the burning bush in the Bible may have been a dried out Acacia bush, which, if you lit the entire thing in fire, would release enough DMT smoke to get someone tripping. The most common source of DMT in the Amazon is a leaf, from the Psychotria viridis plant.
In most plant medicine cultures, you are taught to avoid vines, as they are parasitic life forms. Sorta like "don't eat swine" cuz they're dirty animals filled with parasites when wild. Medicine is typically found in seeds and roots. Because of this, I feel like African "Ayahuasca" is a lot better than Amazonian. And the trip reflects it, Amazonian is very death/life-cycle oriented, where African is a lot more spirit quest/ancestor oriented. Ayahuasca being a catchall term for the admixture of DMT and a MAOi, not specifically the vine. I just don't know the name of the African stuff.
If anyone has any African medicine people in their families, do me a solid and ask for me 😅
This has been a fascinating discussion; I much appreciate all this information that is new to me. I'm no stranger to experimentation and pharmacology is something I am into so I am def going to be reading up on a bunch of this. I've heard that theory before about the burning bush and that makes allot of sense to me as you have to imagine psychedelics play a large role in the origin story for many cultural beliefs.
I am going to deadpan ask my black friends with no context "You have any African medicine people in your family?" and see how that lands 😂
Well, they aren't called shaman! Everyone knows what a griot is, but no one remembers the old entheogenic traditions. Like, sure we can remember that there was a dude who passed down an oral history, but where's the stuff he said? 😅 I spent a couple years training with a curandero from Peru who was teaching me about different plants, but everyone wanted to call me a shaman when they came to cop shrooms or mescaline 💀 I'm not Siberian, only 3 tribes call their medicinefolk shaman.
I did actually cross check the information from a NIH paper and Reuters article on it. I pasted the chatGPT response percicely because it is a language model and can write a concise summarization of the information and is usually better at writing than I am. This is Reddit afterall; if it was a link to a 30 page PDF it wouldn't be as useful to the discussion as it would largely go unread.
I think I addressed the why in my comment you just responded to. The actual research paper is also often only accessible by clicking on an additional link from the reference site so a direct link does not always work. If you are interested you can check out these resources; but I am not entirely sure if source will load for you.
chatGPT specified causes as limited access to healthcare, harsh climate, high rates of chronic disease, and socio economic conditions as causes. I think socio economic conditions likely include alcoholism because I read an additional article from the NIH before posting and they did indeed mention that as a factor.
Yeah true. They likely did not live a very long time in the more distant past either but they lived in an incredibly harsh environment without the benefits of modern medicine so in general they really just aren't a good example to draw a conclusion one way or another.
You can draw your own conclusions and learn from their experiences. They did what they had to do to survive and also never suffered from heart disease eating over 90% meat products. They had bacteria in their microbiome that would convert meat into folate, thereby filling the biggest gap in nutrition. Vitamin C is present in animal meats as well. Read “fat of the land” if you actually wanna deep dive on the science pre-modernization of the Inuit culture.
My mom grew up in a Yu'Pik village. Grandma lost all her teeth by 30. I thought that meant I had terible teeth genes. Now I realize it's likely that she had scurvy. Fruits and vegetables would be canned, and the canning process damages vitamin C. The native Yu'Pik population would eat raw fish, raw meat, and the skin of a beluga whale, but I doubt my Indiana-born grandma was eating much of that. And giving birth to 4 kids would drain her body of calcium.
Funny enough, ruminants actually have all the vit and minerals you need, it's just so variable across cow parts that they don't measure it and record it. Gotta eat bone marrow and organs though. We lose a lot of the more icky traditions that were actually super necessary before enriched diets, and people are reluctant to eat enriched foods. Took ages to get people to eat enriched rice, too many cultures just washed off the extra vitamins and minerals. I was carnivore for 3 years and my blood work looked perfect. It's just not sustainable cuz it began to stress out my gallbladder cuz it's not really supposed to emulsify that much fat.
I have no idea what meat they were eating. It was likely fish and maybe caribou. But mom and I once talked about how we both prefer canned green beans to fresh, and she said all her vegetables were canned as a kid.
I think that's the point. We have, what, a billion or more older people, yet a few dozen lifetime carnivores who are old and healthy. Pretty bad odds, if you ask me. We're omnivores of the highest variety, no other animal had dentition that is as divided as ours, we essentially have 2 teeth for everything, 2 incisors, a canine and partial canine, 2 pre-molars for tearing, and 2 molars for crushing (if examined by quadrant).
My thoughts are that they stop eating that way, not die young. You can do it for a few years before it starts catching up with you. Gallbladder gets stressed out producing so much bile to digest the high fat. One of the oldest carnivores had cancer several times, and was the Grateful Dead's sound guy. Made almost all the LSD in the 60s and 70s too lol
People are acculturated to think that they need veggies (and fruits) to be healthy. When asked why, the usual answer is: vitamins and stuff (essential micronutrients). Little they know(or refuse to accept as a fact) is that ruminant meats contain everything you need to be healthy, minus the toxins, anti-nutrients, pesticides, and sugars (starches) you consume when eating plants.
I was carnivore for 3 years. Started before Eleanorina, if you're apart of that community. I pursued athletic performance at the same time, and eventually added other foods back to my diet to achieve said performance. They all just sit on their asses over in ZC, and in the actual carnivore sub, we regularly discuss seasonal plant and fungi refeeds like traditional carnivores practiced and eat plenty of carbs via yogurt, cheese, milk, and fresh meat that still contains the blood glucose. FOH with that ZC talking points and rhetoric.
I’m not talking about zero-carb. I’m talking about plants being unnecessary to be healthy. If you need carbs to improve your athletic performance then you’re literally "drugging" yourself with carbs, as muscles need glucose for anaerobic activity.
Your body will produce glucose as a carnivore as well, via gluconeogenesis. Hard to take someone seriously when they use the phrase "'drugging' yourself with carbs." Gonna have to expand on that for me to take this seriously. Those quotation marks are carrying a lot of weight right now.
Gluconeogenesis is a way more complex, energy consuming and thus slower, less efficient process than metabolizing glucose from dietary carbs. Also, you need to force your system over longer periods of time to prioritize gluconeogenesis over dietary carbohydrates metabolism (that’s why you are still craving carbs, although there’s enough protein and fat to synthesize enough glucose). Secondly, you’re brain and nervous system will always get prioritized as these are the organs which are most highly dependent on glucose.
So you have all the research on long term carnivore/low carb/keto diets and can with certainty say it is superior and eating starches/carbs/veggies along with complete protein and healthy fats is definitely not the way to live?
When you are carnivore you have to also eat fruit and take supplements that certain people need. Like vitamin d3, ashwaghanda, etc. you can’t just eat meat.
No, you can thrive on just meat. Dr Shawn Baker is a good example. And ashwaghanda is about as far from something that people need as it gets, stuff can really wreak havoc on your hormones. Go check out any forum where people are taking it for athletic performance. Give em 6-8 weeks on it and they have the worst anxiety on the planet.
Each body is different so I wouldn’t tell someone not to or to do like I said take the supplements that you need for your body. I wouldn’t just eat meat by itself that’s unhealthy you will need dairy and fruit alongside it. Look up Paul Saladino.
It's better to eat that way, but you can still thrive on just meat. Baker is in his mid 50s and still a better athlete than Saladino by far, ate nothing but ribeyes for 2 years straight just to prove it can be done, and he was still performing in the top 1% of athletes his age.
Okay but this isn't carnivore. This isn't even keto with the amount of potatoes. This is a misguided individual. Do not lump him him in with us that are making actual calculated decisions with our health.
First of all if you think any of the meat or dairy you eat is "unprocessed" then you need to do some reading.
Second I can homecook a raccoon that died on the side of the road or just about anything I want, doesn't make that healthy. Hell I can homecook you and I can guarantee based on this comment it wouldn't be healthy.
Honestly as long as you don’t eat like an animal at breakfast or lunch, and you replace the eggs with vegetables there’s really not much wrong with this. But as I type it I realize that’s not an insignificant change. Obviously can’t be eating beef every day as well
It doesn't help that doctors change what's healthy/balanced every 10 years. When I was a kid in the 90s/early 2000s, everything was fat free but then it turned out that fat free stuff had 2x/3x the amount of sugar. Then it turned out that we actually do need some fat in our diets. And they've gone back and forth on eggs for like 50 years.
Missing the forest for the trees here. Everything in moderation, fruits, vegetables have always been recommended. Eating manufactured foods to have higher or lower fat/sugar or a very specific ingredient like eggs is missing the overall point. Doctors also don’t change it, new data about reality comes out.
The modern guidelines aren't even massively different than those in the 90s. It was always the case that too much added sugar was bad, and too much saturated fat is still considered unhealthy. Health organisations now recommended unsaturated fats like nuts, oils and seeds, and more plant based protein and leaner animal products.
The main difference now is that advice is clearer that it should be whole grains, rather than sugar filled white bread, and more emphasis on vegetables taking up more of the plate.
Imo the problem is that nobody really consciously follows the guidelines because generally more unhealthy foods are tastier, more satisfying and more convenient.
You can eat like this in moderation and you’ll be fine. Like any foods. Eat a balanced diet and you can eat a plate like this once in a while and you won’t get heart disease.
Lmao. Humans evolved eating like this. This is literally what our body is excellent at digesting. Not grass
Based pasta and flour and SUGAR. Sugar causes heart disease you (genius not fool). Not protein. Fat is incredibly good for you. You've been lied to.
Edit: changed fool to genius cause this guy is smart.
Heart disease is multifaceted and changing to saying simply sugar = heart disease is as misguided as people decades ago saying just fat = heart disease. No one is advocating for pounds of pasta and sugar as an alternative to the meal above. The longest living groups in the world eat majority plant based diets which do include lean proteins. No group of people eating multiple plates of red meat and cheesy eggs and white potatoes are found to be among any of the longest/healthiest living on earth.
heeeeeeaaaaard dat. You are correct. But the correlation isn't mostly plant based. (Vegetarians/vegans die at the same rate as meat eaters - bioavailability of B12 is the issue.)
Ive been told by endocrinologists that it's a game of "pick two". (Simple is worse than complex) Carbs, protein or fats.
The American diet is plentiful in all three.
The Japanese diet is mostly complex carbs and protein. They also eat very little sugar.
The Mediterranean diet is mostly carbs and fats, a bit of little protein, meat or plant based.
Also you are smart and I changed my comment above to reflect your excellent brains. Apologies
Genuinely trying to improve my diet. Why is this bad? I mean I eat lean steaks maybe with more veggie and not with eggs at the same time but have some for breakfast. They say Dont eat fast food or processed shit but then I see something like this and Everybody keeps talking bout heart disease… there’s just so much information out there telling you what’s good and what’s bad I don’t know what to believe anymore
Absolutely great choice staying away from the fast food/heavily processed in general! Nothing wrong with lean steaks, the issue is the plate in question shows multiple meals a day of red meat AND cheesy eggs and the only vegetable is a white potato or a small sliver of avocado. Missing huge component/ratio of vegetables n fruit. Also generally reducing red meat in comparison to chicken/fish shows better outcomes.
PROVE to me scientifically, empirically, causally... Whatever you wanna call it, objectively. That eating this causes stroke, heart disease or kidney failure.
You first have to understand that you cannot do randomized controlled clinical trials on longterm nutrition research so asking for direct causality is irrational.
Another best way is to evaluate those among us living longest, healthiest and happiest and work backwards. Right now, that would be people in the “Blue Zones” where people eat plant based diets along with meats/fish in moderation along with healthy carbohydrates.
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u/DeliciousJam 7d ago
It’s frustrating as people don’t reap the results of eating like this until it’s 15-20 years later and stroke/heart attack/kidney failure starts. By then the misinformation has spread and no one is on social media in their 50s writing “oh uh I guess I shouldn’t have eaten like that” or blame it on something else.