Tom,  I love ya like a brother but the health advise of Mark Sisson is just plain wrong.  I agree that grains with Gluten are bad, but consumption of meat is even more dangerous.  Please watch the documentary film Forks over Knives that debunks all the pro-meat nonsense with scientific evidence.

Then go ahead and eat your animal carcasses if the slaughter creates no guilt.  We ask our government to respect human life, yet we don’t respect any life.

if you want the truth about nutrition and dieting a must read is the china study.
http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-Implications/dp/1932100385 

just scroll over some of the reviews and you will see what I mean.  The best diet is one that is closest to a whole foods plant based diet, avoiding meats, dairy, eggs etc…  Basically become a vegan and eat whole foods.  It works for me and many friends who have tried that diet lost weight, gained muscle, slept better, have more energy and most importantly avoid most cancers.  Like Sbatecpa says watch forks over knives and it will change your idea of nutrition forever.  

I disagree that gains are bad.  I would argue better foods would be fruits and vegetables but eating whole gains is not the end of the world as the primal diet wants you to believe.

“We ask our government to respect human life, yet we don’t respect any life.”

Yes – including plant life, I can hear the screams of those poor little bushes even now.

Hi Tom -

Great news that you’re taking the plunge.

There’s this funny and extremely informative docu, called “Fathead”. Here’s two parts for your wife to watch:

(1) Focussing on natural diet/lipid(fat)hypothesis/cholesterol [start: 00:54:20]
(2) Focussing on grains/carbohydrates/insulin [start: 01:21:26]

Also in this documentary: good parts about the follies and political machinations of radical vegetarianism.

Take care and kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard

There’s nothing immoral about respecting reality. Humans are designed to eat animals and plants. A diet completely absent one or the other is detrimental to human health.

Equating human life with animal life is what’s immoral. 

Isn’t this whole “Primal Blueprint” a big scam? I mean, he emphasizes a high fat/meat diet. I’m sure it works for some people if their sole purpose is to build muscle or lose weight, but being healthy should be the larger goal, which I don’t think his diet is geared towards. It’s weird that Tom Woods blogged about this, because I had just recently heard of Mark Sisson and started researching him! 

Dr. Kurt Harris over at http://www.archevore.com is not only a proponent  of a paleo like diet, but he is also a big time austro-libertarian, and an overall very entertaining guest on radio shows, would love to hear you interview him if you were ever to talk about this topic again.

One thing that the GKV’s (Green Khmer Veggies) are missing for obvious reasons, is the love of freedom and the desire to run one’s own life, that transpires in the interview between Tom and Mark Sisson.

Now, before trying to explain what the vegetarian commenters are missing, I’d like them to think about freedom first, because if they don’t, my argument will inevitably fall on deaf ears anyway. So here goes, in the tiniest of nutshells: Freedom doesn’t mean doing everything you want to, no, freedom is: not having to do what you don’t want to do.

Now think of it, let it sink in for a little while and then have a look at what I’m saying to you meat-hating guys.

If a RP supporter doesn’t like guns, he doesn’t buy one. If a progressivist* doesn’t like guns, he wants all guns outlawed.
If a RP supporter is a vegetarian, he simply doesn’t eat meat. If a progressivist is a vegetarian, he wants all meat products banned for everyone.

This list can go on and on, ad nauseam

So in sum, it’s not just that you’re anti- meat/saturated fat/primal lifestyle/ and so on. The more fundamental issue here is that, in most instances, you’re really anti-freedom.

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard

* progressivist = liberals + neo-conmen; supporters of the welfare/warfare state, rule by “experts” and the financial fascism of central banking.

Yes, those vegetarian Inuit never touch animal fat or protein. 

I stated a “whole foods plant based diet” is ideal.  To categorize vegetarians as a one big group is not fair.  There are many that eat very healthy and in some cases very strict vegans could not consume any junk food because things like processed sugar would not be in their diet.  The China Study, with over 1,000 successful reviews on Amazon shows more than enough evidence this diet works.

Sounds like you are on the path to success even if you occasionally eat meat.  If your diet is mostly from “starches” whether that be veggies, fruits, grains or anything with fiber that’s the best.  That’s the key, eat foods with fiber because only fibrous foods  can be easily digest.  Foods with no fiber like meat  cannot be digested easily and are stored in your body as fat instead of being released as energy.  

I disagree with the primal diet because of his claim that grains are bad, even whole grains.  And if I correctly heard the interview some root vegetables and legumes should be avoided?  Legumes are very healthy and high in protein for those worried they aren’t receiving enough plant protein.  

http://www.julianbakery.com – they have 1g/slice low carb bread, some slightly higher.  That saved me since I’m a bread eater.

A primal person’s diet would consist largely of bugs and the things in the bugs digestive system… Hunting would have been difficult, but when an animal would have been killed the entire thing would have been eaten. That would include the intestines, which would include the grains and starches processes by the animal. 
If you want to seriously  go primal, examine and replicate the life and diet of our closest evolutionary relatives.  

I agree for the most part with these Paleo/Primal types – the idea that we should eat what our pre-agricultural ancestors used to eat, is brilliant and correct – but unfortunately, I believe their carb-phobia and fructose-phobia to be misguided.

When I first dropped grains, I tried a natural high-fat diet like this one (for those who don’t realize it, if you follow a food regime such as this one most of your calories will inevitably be fats). It was a disaster. I lost a lot of weight, which was a BAD THING for me, since I have always had a tendency to be dangerously underweight. The more I ate fat, the more I dangerously lost weight. Then I realized that I was eating more fat than my body was able to digest, which led to nausea, indigestion and a false sense of being “full” even if I hadn’t satisfied my actual  caloric needs. Then I found out that a kind of forced caloric reduction due to inability to handle lots of fat isn’t rare at all among paleolithic eaters. Since most people feel that they are overweight, getting less calories might actually SEEM like a good thing initially when you’re shredding all the excess weight. However it isn’t sustainable in the long term. It eventually leads to muscle loss and depression (as your metabolism eventually slows down).

Some people are naturally better at digesting and processing fat, others are better at dealing with carbs. Those who are good at digesting fat will thrive on Mark Sisson’s diet. Those who are good at digesting carbs, won’t. It seems to be partly related to your ethnic group – Northern Europeans used to eat more fat historically, while Southern Europeans like myself are more likely to be in the carb field. Tom Woods looks like he has at least some Italian ancestry, though I might be wrong. Tom, please do consider the possibility that a high-fat diet might deprive your children of sufficient calories.

It’s obviously false that carbs by themselves always cause blood sugars issues – just look at the entirety of rice-eating Asia. Of course you don’t have to eat rice, which ifull of anti-nutrients. If you happen to be a carb type, you have to eat FRUIT.

There are lots and lots of successful high-fruit eaters, like the blogger at Castle Grok, or Denise Minger, the oft-quoted debunker of the China Study, who (this will shock some) also eats a diet of mostly fruit. Their common denominator is that they eat their fruit extremely ripe. It’s false what Mark says here, that present day fruit is much sweeter than its ancestor. See here:
http://rawfoodsos.com/2011/05/31/wild-and-ancient-fruit/

The reason some people have problems wth modern fruit is that it’s always severely underripe in the store (truly ripe fruit would be considered overripe by most people) so the only way to eat fruit is to learn how to get it to ripen properly at home, and it takes a lot of know-how.

For those who doubt that primitive people would eat so much fruit, remember that we evolved at the TROPICS, where fruit is sweet, plentiful and available all year round.

By the way, we DO know what pre-agricultural man used to eat. There are
lots of hunter-gatherer tribes around the world. We can just emulate
their diet. With some exceptions like the Inuits, who of course are an
extreme case since they don’t have access to plant food at all, all of
them eat lots of starches from wild tubers and roots.

Oh and take a look at this one:
http://castlegrok.com/174-days-of-fruit/
or for that matter any other post at the same blog.

My slightly dark complexion comes from my being half Armenian, though everyone understandably assumes I’m part Italian.

“It’s obviously false that carbs by themselves always cause blood sugars issues – just look at the entirety of rice-eating Asia.”

Depends on how you look and what you’re looking for. There’s rice and then there’s rice (also the way it’s turned into meals differs, with sugar used more widely with white rice). A population wide change from traditional brown/wild rice to white rice will most certainly give rise to an increased incidence of metabolic syndrome (and other health issues related to insulin metabolism).

Good overall points though. Different human populations also differ in their evolutionary hunter/gatherer pathways with regards to their diet. Of course, the primal blueprint is about more than just diet.

Take care,
Richard

Ha, so it has nothing to do with whether it’s good for you or not, but everything to do with whether bessie deserves better or not.  Listen, if you think of yourself as nothing more than a cow or chicken, then more power to you.  As for me, I know that I’m better than a cow or chicken and will slaughter, dress, clean, cook and devour their carcasses until my heart’s content.  You keep the soy, I’ll have bessie.

The single greatest era for growth of the human brain is when man started eating meat.  Not, carrots.  Not, soy.  Not, broccoli.  Not, cabbage.  But meat.

I don’t, so there.

“Do we know that our ancestors were so very healthy?”, you ask.

Yes, we know, thanks to palaeontology/anthropology. Studies of pre-agricult diet, combined with health related data (skeletal, dental etc.) tell us the story. As soon as agriculture arrives (here in Holland at about 5000 BCE, not widespread) we see a marked decline: tooth decay sets in, smaller skeletons and so on.. A pre-neolithical culture survived here in the Low Countries for quite a long time, at least up ’til 3500 BCE, so it’s easy to compare them. These hunter/gatherers (Swifterbantcultuur) were much taller, about as tall as today’s native Dutchies, and their dental records were shiny. These primals only used a small amount of wheat for one thing: to brew Mesolithic beer

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard

A majority of people think that Austrian Economics/libertarianism is bunk but its still my truth and even tho I sometimes eat meat and am not the vegan zealot I have been called here, I know eating meat is not healthy for my body or soul.