ULers Carrying an Extra 20-40 lbs – WHY?!

>> My point was just that meat in both small or high amounts has always been part of the human diet. So if you want to eat healthy go ahead and eat meat and dairy -you wont keel over from clogged arteries and neither did our ancestors.

Correct. Something else usually killed them first. So, if you plan on being gored to death by a mastodon at age 26, feel free to eat whatever you like. :o)

But in truth we have NO IDEA what killed senescent 'cave men', so you can't make a statement like that, brother! That's reaching a bit.

Or if you mean CIVILIZED man, I would just plain disagree. The poor likely didn't die from these causes, but the rich (who could afford to overindulge in dairy, meat, etc.) were plagued by gout and heart attacks just as we are today. Perhaps this wasn't very severe in pharoaic Egypt but the problem got worse as food production technology improved and the rich could eat more and more. Look at Henry VIII- massively overweight, gouty, died at age 55. (Nobody is quite sure what killed him, but the syphillis hypothesis is pretty much discredited now.)

And ,actually, a lot of the world's 'ancestors' DIDN'T eat much dairy. That is why there is such a high rate of lactose intolerance among asians, among others. There was no pressure on the population to develop or retain lactase in the genome.

Euopeans, of course, have a relatively low rate of lactose intolerance. So most researched beleive that there is a longer dairy tradition among Europeans- but it ABSOLUTELY does not pre-date our speciation into Homo sapiens. The earliest known domesticated animal is the dog, around 15000 BCE. The earliest likely dairy animals were sheep and goats, around 10000 BCE (IIRC)- long long after the emergence of modern Homo sapiens about 200,000 years ago.

We are not built to eat the massive amounts of meat (fat) and dairy that domestication has made available to us.

And, just because primitive man did something does NOT make it a good idea. Small tribes can get rather inbred, for example. Primitive man used his yard as his toilet and midden (if not his house!) Etc. Primitive man ate something because he COULD, not because it was good for him. People living on that fine line between survival and starvation aren't worried about their HDL/LDL ratio…

Human intelligence developed too quickly- we were suddenly smart enough to access food sources that our bodies weren't really optimized for. (Like domesticated animals.) Ideally I suppose we should still have a chimpanzee's diet- almost all fruits and veggies, perhaps some termites, with the occasional baby baboon thrown in for protein. Yum.

I'm not sure how grains would fit into the Chimpanzee Diet.

Well, actually, our bodies did adjust a little- our digestive system got smaller when we learned to cook food and make it easier to digest. But that was a mechanical adjustment, not so much a metabolic or nutritional one. AND the use of fire is older than modern humans- about 400,000 years ago.

I guess I think of people who try to justify eating all the meat and fat they like as a somewhat less irrational equivalent to all the people who bought into the tobacco company propaganda and kept claiming that "no one has every really proven that smoking is bad for you." They are doing something that they like and are unwilling to give up, so they latch onto this false proposition that it isn't really bad for you and try to defend it.

Anyway, I'll cautiously support Lynn's 'breeding success' model. "Anything you do after you reproduce doesn't matter", as they say in the biology textbooks. Unless you improve your spawn's survival by caring for it, as humans do. Then, "anything you do after junior is off to college doesn't matter". :o)

When I was in Japan you could tell who was eating a traditional Japanese diet and who wasn't because the traditional diet people had bodyfat of about 2% … that may be an exaggeration but the old guys I used to do winter mountaineering with didn't have a scrap of visible body fat – at all – so whatever bodyfat percentage that represents is what they had.

The food you got served in the mountain huts reflects what a lot of country people, like my parents-in-law, still eat, which is the more traditional Japanese diet – rice, small amounts of grilled fish, miso, tofu, kombu (seaweed) and other fermented foods based on beans (soy and adzuki in particular), mushrooms (lots of different types), lots of vegetables and often wild vegetables (collected from mountains, forests and riverbanks) including bamboo shoots, fruit and things like processed fish products and udon (wheat noodles). The diet was also heavily seasonal. There wasn't a lot of refined sugar and not a lot of red meat because it was traditionally banned (Japan was a Buddhist country so you weren't allowed to eat meat, on pain of death).

The only drawback to the diet is that because lots of it is fermented it's quite salty, so stomach cancer is quite common in the older people.

At 2% BF you'd be dead or really close (you'd be at or nearing the minimum of essential fat). Also, no visible BF does not equate to no BF. A lot of people carry their fat under their muscle tissue as opposed to on top of it. Ex. you'll see people with clear abdominal definition that are also a bit overweight. Anyway, 3-4% is around body builder competition level but they only maintain that for competitions. 5-8% is more normal for very lean athletes. That's all assuming my memory is correct.

"A lot of people carry their fat under their muscle tissue as opposed to on top of it."

True, but I don't think these guys had lots of fat under their muscle. Just very, very lean.

Likely true. Interesting that the portrayal of Buddha is nearly always what we would consider obese.

Holy wah, talk about a thread that won't die! It's exhausting. I just wanted to throw out a comment to correlate diet and genetics, kind of inspired by Mike and his steak.

I've known people who ate red meat, bacon, and fried foods as the primary parts of their diet… and several of those people who washed their diet down with copious amounts of alcohol–say a pint of liqour a day?–and smoked a pack or two a day. The significance? Many of these people lived well into their 90s. On the other hand, I've known non-smoking, (relatively) non-drinkers who ate low fat, healthy diets who died in their 50s or 60s.

It would be absurd to argue that diet has no effect on health. It would also be absurd to argue that genetics has nothing to do with the effects of diet on an individual.

.

Dean,

I always home in our your posts to learn the most in the least amount of time. Thank you for your many contributions to BPL.

I think I may have suggested that genetics is not important in so much as genetics cannot make you violate the laws of physics. Calories in < calories out = not trumped by genetics.

I am still dubious that saturated fat is as entirely evil as it is portrayed. There is contradictory evidence. Here is one article I found:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=16135250#B2

But they do cite Uffe at one point so I guess the whole concept is trash?

"I'm not sure how grains would fit into the Chimpanzee Diet…Well, actually, our bodies did adjust a little- our digestive system got smaller when we learned to cook food and make it easier to digest. But that was a mechanical adjustment, not so much a metabolic or nutritional one"

Our bodies actually adjusted in a major way, via a mutation in the amylase gene that allows us to easily digest amylose (the main carbohydrate in grains). So comparison with chimps is not really ideal as we clearly (some of us) can handle dairy and grain digestion. This, combined with agriculture, is no doubt what helped our species to rapidly expand to over 6 billion humans…great breeding success, but this doesn't mean it's good for our longevity!

"I am still dubious that saturated fat is as entirely evil as it is portrayed. There is contradictory evidence. Here is one article I found:"

Saturated fatty acids are not, in themselves, the devil. I think you can do quite well on a high fat, moderate protien, low carb diet. I think you can do quite well on a high carb, moderate protein, low fat diet. I think you can do just fine on a moderate carb, moderate protein, moderate fat diet which is low in sat fats. But a high sat fat high carb diet is an absolute no-no for weight control IMHO. The potato and sour cream diet is just not a winning proposition…

"It would be absurd to argue that diet has no effect on health. It would also be absurd to argue that genetics has nothing to do with the effects of diet on an individual."

Of course it would be absurd to disregard genetic and diet interactions. The problem is, we don't yet know which genes are the good guys and bad guys, so at the individual level there is no way to say "its' safe for YOU to eat, drink and smoke what you like"…so it comes down to are you a gambler or not. Put another way, do you choose hedonism or some restraint to improve your long term chances, lacking any genetic evidence? Sorry fact is, most folks choose hedonism, and THAT is the root of the obesity epidemic. It's really just a fundamental human nature. Evolution has left us with the genes to easily gain fat, but has not selected for genes that make it easy to lose fat. All the genes that have so far been identified with eating disorders (as in excess eating) have been genes involved in appetite rather than metabolism. So the hedonistic eating/drinking sex drive is mostly hard-wired. The defence that "it's my metabolism that made me fat" just doesn't hold up to the evidence. It's your unrestrained appetite for salty fatty sugary foods that made you fat. I am absolutely certain that the ability to restrain from a craving IS genetically determined to a large extend. So maybe a fat person could argue it WAS their genes that made them fat, but via a behavioral effect rather than metabolic.

" Is it even worth it for an overweight person to go UL? Wouldn't they be just as happy joining a gym losing that extra weight and carrying a pack with a Coleman car camping griddle out in to the backcountry?"

Going back to the original OP, I realise the question seems a lot like "why don't fat people just lose weight"? That question could be posed to overweight folks in all walks of life, not just backpacking. The most obvious answer is that, if a person, overwight or not, wishes to enjoy the backcountry, then they will enjoy it more with a lighter pack. Most overweight folks do NOT enjoy dieting!!! It's like saying to a really skinny guy who want to bulk up, "why don't you just go to the gym and eat more"? Like, don't you think they at least tried that???

Just for the record, my earlier comments were not meant to detract from anyone's thoughts. I was also not endorsing the concept of going home, frying up a pound of bacon, drinking a fifth of whiskey, and smoking a big cigar. Rather, I was suggesting that beyond a certain point science can become more fuzzy, less certain. If someone is markedly obese, basic changes to diet and exercise can yield dramatic results. Once you've reached a somewhat "normalized baseline," however, there is a certain bit of, um, uncertainty. Things are not always black and white. Reality is probably somewhere in the middle.

An old saying: Everything in moderation, including moderation.

Cheers-

"Reality is probably somewhere in the middle."

Reality is, we all have genetic variations which make us more prone to some disease or other. But the environmental factors are also huge. You don't get alcoholics in fundamentalist Muslim cultures, even if you have a strong genetic predisposition. You don't get obese in a famine stricken region, no matter your genetics. You don't get lung cancer if you're a live in a Mormon culture. You don't get heart disease if you get killed in an accident, no matter your genetic risk factors.

Well, see! There's moderation right there! Obesity in a famine region!

I don't think I'm being obfuscating, or making any kind of all or nothing insinuations. I didn't say that genetics was the only significant factor in health outcomes of diet… far from it, actually.

Merely trying to point out that we can't answer all questions with definitive scientific explanations. Life is full of curve balls.

I know what you're saying, Brad. But there is a tendency for people to say "I can't lose weight!" As though they some how are beyond the laws of physics.

Late to this thread, but going back to original post:

>So here's what it made me think… Is it even worth it for an overweight person to go UL? Wouldn't they be just as happy joining a gym losing that extra weight and carrying a pack with a Coleman car camping griddle out in to the backcountry?

Since I started hiking about two and half years ago I've steadily lost 14kg (31lbs) in weight (sorry, no change in diet just exercise). In the same time, with some dedication, I've shaved probably less than half that off my initial pack weight. On paper and out on the trail I'm pretty sure which makes more difference (the body weight).

*But*, one of the things that really drew me into hiking, especially initially, was all the gear, especially UL gear.

Plus, if you're not used to it, walking all day up and down hills is (way) more than hard enough with nothing but clothes on your back, let alone a car camping griddle. I would benefit *more* from my UL kit two years ago than I would now, because I'm a bit fitter now.

So for someone overweight, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter if they want a lighter pack so they can go further, be more comfortable, or just because they enjoy the UL gear game: if it gets them interested or gets them out there, and makes it more fun – great. If it's weight loss they want, hiking is the most enjoyable way to lose weight as far as I'm concerned, so that's exactly where they should be – not using up their lives at a gym.

So absolutely I think it's worth it.

>Merely trying to point out that we can't answer all questions with definitive scientific explanations.

Maybe, but I think not to try and understand and explain things is a bit defeatist. Lots of things considered inexplicable in the past would still be that way if we always thought like that.

>(a lot of discussion about diet)

I imagine we'd be less obsessive about diets if we weren't saddled with sedentary lifestyles due to desk jobs and getting around by car. With which, managing to get many hours of exercise 6-7 days a week is difficult (near impossible if you have children), unfortunately I really do think that's what we're built for (it's what my appetite was intended for anyway). But instead that would seem intense to most people now :(

"But in truth we have NO IDEA what killed senescent 'cave men', so you can't make a statement like that, brother! That's reaching a bit."

We have some, there is a some evidence that many of them where very fit and if they survived the mastodon they lived about as long as we do today it was just harder to do. Thats not even considering the documented health of non-western non-industrial cultures. How do you explain the over all better health of cultures like the french who eat more fat and cholesterol?

"but it ABSOLUTELY does not pre-date our speciation into Homo sapiens."
Im not sure how this is even relevant, we already been over the fact that dairy and grains are relatively new to the human diet. If you can tolerate dairy eat it up.

"And, just because primitive man did something does NOT make it a good idea"
My opinion is that its absurd to say that people always ate meat through out our evolution but it was never good for us- but now we know better as we suffer an epidemic of the very diseases that were claimed to be caused by sat fat and cholesterol suspiciously at the same time those fats were replaced with so called healthy ones and people were told to abstain from meat.

"but the rich (who could afford to overindulge in dairy, meat, etc.) were plagued by gout and heart attacks just as we are today."
and you are just assuming that it was fat and cholesterol that was the cause and I would it was the inflammation inducing high grain and sugar they ate.

"I guess I think of people who try to justify eating all the meat and fat they like as a somewhat less irrational equivalent to all the people who bought into the tobacco company propaganda and kept claiming that "no one has every really proven that smoking is bad for you."

If veganisim was the one and true way to fitness I would do it in second. I used to love eating a high grain diet and have a real sweet tooth and it showed. Switching to a diet of mostly fat,protein,veggies was not some hedonistic decision that I have to rationalize -it worked. Im the same weight and waist size(32)I was when I loved to work out in high school. The difference is Im far stronger and healthier than I was even then. By the way you don't HAVE to eat red meat any meat will do and you don't have to eat dairy-but if you want go ahead (preferably organic or wild). Although I suspect red is less preferable to other meats nutrition wise. You can pretty much eat all you want because its pretty hard to eat a whole lot since fats are very filling. But have fun eating your potato chips with your calculator. Bottom line there is research that challenges the old views and the old views are based on questionable ground.

The latest scientific research (actually, for quite some time now, but the studies keep adding up) suggests that it is a bad idea to be eating a lot of red meat. But I don't see anything wrong with eating plenty of fish and fowl, with occasional red meat intake. This is quite different from "eat as much red meat and dairy as you like" though. I'm convinced that would not be good for you at all.

The problem with red meat and dairy is the source.
I pretty sure most studies on them will be on industrial farmed and processed meat and dairy.
But if you can get organic whole milk from a good free range farm it will have little resemblance to the 'milk' on the shelves. Same with organic free range meats and games meats .

Hmmm, I'm not convinced. There have been a number of studies which suggest that there are few significant health benefits to eating organic… or perhaps it was that any potential benefits are so small that they are swamped by other factors in our environment.

Take bowel cancer, for example, which has been very strongly linked to consumption of red meat (not just processed/smoked, although that is the worst culprit). I don't think there is any evidence to suggest that organic red meat gives you a smaller increase in risk of bowel cancer than non-organic meat. Of course, you can eat either and never get bowel cancer… we're talking statistical differences which affect a few people in every thousand I think. Cold comfort if you're one of those people though!

Hmmm, I'm not convinced..

No need to be convinced. I actually share your view that other meats are probably better for you overall. Im just not convinced that its bad for you either.

There's certainly a lot to be said for eating plenty of fish, if you can actually get your hands on fish that doesn't contain too many man-made pollutants. Wild salmon from Alaska for example? It's a real pity we have done so much damage to world fish stocks.

>> [Etc. Etc.] On the other hand, I've known non-smoking, (relatively) non-drinkers who ate low fat, healthy diets who died in their 50s or 60s.

Yes. Luck certainly plays a part. I cannot, for instance, truthfully make a statement like "if you eat lots of cholesterol and smoke three packs a day then you will die young, but if you eat right and exercise you'll live to be a hundred." That's simply not how it works. Instead, STATISTICS and RISK are the language of science. What I could say is that such habits will dramatically increase your RISK of health issues. Absolutely. I've also known people who did all of the wrong things and lived to ripe old ages. But how many people who had the same behaviors DIDN'T, because of their smoking, cheezeburgers, etc.?

Speaking of statistics, isn't life insurance kind of morbid? Basically, you are saying "I'll bet the insurance company that I'll die before they get more money from my premiums than they'll have to pay out upon my death."

>> It would be absurd to argue that diet has no effect on health. It would also be absurd to argue that genetics has nothing to do with the effects of diet on an individual.

I would have to agree. Obviously some people are more genetically predisposed to certain conditions than others. As an extreme example, if you have familial hypercholesterolemia you are kind of screwed no matter what you eat. (I've seen spun-down blood serum samples that looked like milk…)
And, actually, that's a GREAT example of the reproductive success stuff that Lynn talked about! Because FH doesn't tend to cause severe cardiovascular problems until AFTER your prime reproductive years (in its heterozygous form), there isn't much Darwinian pressure against it.
A dominant gene that killed people at age 10 would die out pretty quick, wouldn't it?
"Survival of the fittest" is a very confusing term. It does NOT mean that any trait that is good for an individual gets passed on. Instead, it means that any trait that IMPROVES REPRODUCTIVE SUCCESS tends to get passed on. (Which is kind of intuitive, when you think about it.) That isn't the most rigorous definition- eusocial insects come to mind as an example that stresses it- but it is a pretty close approximation.

>> I am still dubious that saturated fat is as entirely evil as it is portrayed.

Well, honestly, me, too. It is certainly bad for you, but probably not AS bad as we thought back in the 80s and 90s, when everyone was really upset about it, avoiding eggs, etc.

In general, since it is simply impossible to maintain a healthy lifestyle in all aspects all the time, I simply advocate moderation in all things. Be reasonable. If I let her, my wife would live on rare steak and baked potatoes…

EDIT– I just read that Brad mentioned the moderation thing, too.

>> But they do cite Uffe at one point so I guess the whole concept is trash?

No, brother. I can't say that. BUT you have developed a VERY good habit in that you are checking sources. Just because somebody can cite a reference doesn't mean that that what they are saying isn't bogus. A LOT of wingnut stuff gets published. You could cite all kinds of wierd, fringe, new-age, UFO-abduction, anal-probing, Atlantean civilization stuff if you wanted to. It is "cite-able."
Beware a few things:
Any time you see a cite for an UNpublished scientific article, be INCREDIBLY suspicious. Any time you see somebody citing his own earlier work, you MUST check on that work and it's citations, because it might be based on utterly wingnut info. As a general guide, anytime you see somebody identified as a "world-renonwed" whatever kind of scientist on a book cover- doubt it. Anybody who is world-renowned probably does not publish mass-media books, and certainly isn't likely to be tooting their own horn in such a manner. The "world renowned" or similar phraseology is commonly used by wingnuts who have a few supporters or who have authored books in the past. Or who have been on Oprah. That is their criteria for "world-renowned." Finally, any time you see a quote from someone who works for a "think tank" or something like that, check out that organization on SourceWatch. You can find a lot of 'scientific'-looking info about how the danger of cigarettes has been overstated and about how oil is a benificent energy source published by the Heartland Institute, for example. (Sorry, Rog- I'm just trying to make a point about critiquing publications, here. Please don't jump in…) BUT, when you know that Heartland is funded by several tobacco and oil companies, and in fact has or has had many of their executives on their board, well, that changes things, doesn't it?
If you are being VERY thorough, you could investigate such likes with ALL of the citations, but that gets old quick.

>> Our bodies actually adjusted in a major way, via a mutation in the amylase gene that allows us to easily digest amylose (the main carbohydrate in grains).

I would propose that a copy-number mutation for a single gene isn't a "major way", Lynn. Certainly IMPORTANT for its survival benefit, but not the major metabolic overhaul that would be needed to turn humans into near-obligate carnivores. Likewise with lactase, as I mentioned. IMHO these are indeed critically important, but not drastic. They both increased the number of food sources that are digestable for humans, but neither has ANY effect on how our metabolisms react to all that fat and sugar floating around in our bloodstreams.

>> The most obvious answer is that, if a person, overwight or not, wishes to enjoy the backcountry, then they will enjoy it more with a lighter pack.

A cogent point that gets back to the OP…

>> Rather, I was suggesting that beyond a certain point science can become more fuzzy, less certain.
>> Merely trying to point out that we can't answer all questions with definitive scientific explanations.

Certainly! On some subjects, we are VERY fuzzy. But not ALL subjects. And on many subjects there are people who try to MAKE things fuzzy when they aren't. The fringe does this with some regularity, as do politicians on BOTH extremes. Often it works like this:
99% of scientists agree on something that a politician finds inconvenient. He thus wants to create the impression of disagreement on the subject in the scientific community. So, in the name of "getting the full picture", he invites two people to speak before some committee. One is a representative of the 99% and one is the leader of the 1% wingnuts. The discussion is then promoted with vigor, and the politician makes a great display of publicly praising BOTH representatives for their "opinions.". This does two things: 1) it inappropriately legitimizes the wingnut, and 2) creates the false impression that the split is more like 50/50 than 99/1. Thus, the politician can claim that we really don't know what the answer is, so until 'more research' is done we can just keep doing (whatever it was that he wanted). That is also why many real scientists don't like to engage the wingnuts- it lends them legitimacy. But sometimes, if all that the public are hearing is the wingnuts, you just HAVE to step up and be the voice of reason…
Watch out for stuff like that. I REALLY don't trust ANY politician.

>> You don't get lung cancer if you're a live in a Mormon culture.

Well, heck, actually almost 5% of lung cancers ARE sporadic… Just sayin' :o)

>> Im not sure how this is even relevant,

Well, Brian, when you say that eating lots of meat and dairy is OK because early humans did it all the time, you are kind of implying that humans have evolved for that diet. They have not. See above.

>> Bottom line there is research that challenges the old views and the old views are based on questionable ground.

Bull. See my last hundred or so posts… Are you going to be my next Rog, Brian? I'll stop arguing with the True Believer, now. :o)

>> There's certainly a lot to be said for eating plenty of fish

Of course! As I said, I'm not a vegan. I'm all for fish. Heck, I'm all for any other meat. And dairy. I just fall into the moderation camp. It is the devout carnivores among us who are kidding themselves. (For some people this really DOES approach being a religious issue…)
But then, among diet proponents, an unusually large percentage of vegans are really religious about it, eh? But almost any food has both benefits and drawbacks- even a vegan diet. A vegan diet is, almost of necessity, a high-fiber diet. High-fiber diets increase the risk of colonic volvulus. Of course it also decreases the risk of colon cancer, so, pick your poison. Personally I'd rather have a volvulus…

P.S. Brad and Evan: do you guys dress alike, too? 'Cause your avatars are confusing… :o)

I changed my avatar to be less confusing for you :P

Ouch. Touche.