Ketogenic diet as a way to lighten pack?

[Clint Hewitt]

(by the way it isn't true that humans are unique in terms of farming and agriculture. Many kinds of social insects have done it far longer than we have, notably ants and termites and bees. Other kinds of insects and bees and even fish care for domesticated "cattle")

Miguel

In what ways do the above species farm/ care for domesticated cattle or food?

I can see that where there are bees there are flowers, where there are no flowers there are no bees and where there are no bees there are no flowers. It is a symbiotic relationship, you could even argue they are the same organism. (I recently saw a program showing people, I think in Japan(?), hand pollinating flowering trees because something had wiped out the local bee population, to keep the tree species alive, the tree could not survive with out the bees, or substitute bees)

Do bees wipe out competitors to its food source? Or wipe out the food source of its competitors. Or plant more flowers and take over areas that once belonged to another species?

Do these fish protect there cattle and wipe out competing fish. As humans almost did to say the North American Wolf protecting our "cattle". Do gangs of these fish attack other gangs of these fish in an all out war to take there current crop of cattle? Do these fish breed there cattle together?

I guess my question to you is in your opinion how are these farming practices by these animals similar to us, how are they different?

If you would take the time to answer I would appreciate it, as I am interested in this topic.

Thanks

[Nick Gatel]

All of this makes sense.

The difficulty is determining what our ancestors ate. The diets of the Inuit differ from those people who lived in tropical rain forests. But there are probably some commonalities. More than likely almost all of them ate meat, fish, fowl. And for the most part (over ~ 10,000 years ago) other foods were gathered, not grown. And when we look at meat & fowl, we need to determine what those ancient animals and bird ate themselves.

Plus those ancient peoples probably got more exercise in a day than many modern people get in a month. So it comes down to lifestyle and food to me.

Agriculture allowed people to store food for long periods of time, mitigating some of the problems with climate cycles and also allowed some members more time to engage in activities other than survival. This part is good because excess production allows humans to engage in technology, art, literature, and music. That is part of what we are. So are we now evolving or de-evolving? I am afraid it might be the later.

[BlackHatGuy]

"So are we now evolving or de-evolving?"

Depends on whether or not you use some recent BPL forum activity as a guide……. ;-)

[Nick Gatel]

Depends on whether or not you use some recent BPL forum activity as a guide……. ;-)

Now that is funny!

[Anonymous]

"Depends on whether or not you use some recent BPL forum activity as a guide……. ;-)"

LOFL

[David Ure]

"Depends on whether or not you use some recent BPL forum activity as a guide……. ;-)"

Recent? Puleeeeze.

[Anonymous]

"So to take us to task to try to explain what we are learning without doing the research and reading yourself is a bit lopsided."

I must be getting sloppy with my language, Miguel, because you persist in reading the worst into my post. I am not taking you or anybody else to task. This is a discussion on a subject that I find very interesting and which has given me a lot to think about, and also have studied to a fair degree from a different perspective. However, when I encounter a statement that I disagree with, I feel it is my right to register my disagreement, accompanied by my reasoning. My impression to date is that you find this offensive, and I am sorry for that, but it will not cause me to cease posting. To be clear, I am NOT taking Paleo studies, OR the Paleo diet in its entirety, lightly. There is one main area that I find problematic for the general population, by which I mean those who are not trying to lose weight or suffer from type 2 diabetes, and that is the ketogenic diet. There is ample evidence to prove that humans, indeed all mammals, are designed to use glucose as a substrate for metabolism, along with fat and a small amount of protein. Google up "mammals AND glycogen" if you don't believe me, or "primates AND glycogen". This is more than enough to convince me that hunter gatherers never lived in a constant state of ketosis, rather than exclusively when they were short of food. Nor should most modern humans. Brian's explanation of the Paleo diet convinced me that it is a perfectly viable diet for those who choose it, but by no means the only one, much less the optimal one. That remains to be determined. To those who choose the ketogenic diet, I wish them well and hope they remain healthy over the long term.

"Others can resist the notion of a range of healthy recommendations all they want, especially the emerging knowledge coming out about grains, but the truth is that there is a very real, very visible, and very persistent problem with obesity in American (and to a lesser extent elsewhere). People are unnaturally fat. And getting worse all the time. Prople's exercise habits have not changed that drastically in the last 50 years, and yet obesity rates have risen to epidemic proportions."

I will refer you back to my previous observations about civilizations being based on grains. They have been remarkably successful for millenia, including here in America up until about 40-50 years ago. What has changed is that people are growing more sedentary, stressed by modern life, and taking an increasing part of their food from extremely unhealthy sources, eg refined sugar, white flour carbs, etc, and are constantly bombarded with advertisements for unhealthy food. To make matters worse, food is everywhere. Contrary to what you say, people's exercise habit HAVE changed in the last 50 years. That is so well established as to be unworthy of argument. Kids are spending more time inside, either watching TV, playing video games, twittering, etc, and less time moving around. Physical education is rarely offered in schools anymore. It was mandatory when I was a kid,and when school was out we were out the door to play sports and run around. No one drove a car to school, we walked. Today the school parking lots of high schools are fulls of student cars, and younger kids ride a bus to school. The same goes for a lot of adults, regarding a sedentary life style. It is no surprise, given the above, that there is an epidemic of obesity and type 2 diabetes, both of which were rare 50 years ago.

"I don't see how you can just dismiss what they are saying."

I do NOT dismiss what they are saying. I didn't know first hand a lot of what they are saying, at least until this thread. I do, and shall continue to, question the ketogenic diet for the general population, as well as the statements made here by some that the Paleo diet is the answer to mankind's dietary problems. It is much more complicated than that.

[Miguel Arboleda]

Recent? Puleeeeze

That would make almost everyone in this thread a past contributing member of the Neanderthal Degenerates Club. :-P

(paleo humor, un-sugar-coated)

[Miguel Arboleda]

Tom, I must be getting sloppy, too, because I certainly wasn't making a veiled referral only to you; I was just making a general observation towards everyone here showing so much skepticism towards those of us bringing up the paleo offering. In the past I have always named you directly when I was discussing things with you, haven't I? I have always respected your opinions. Please don't feel I was attacking you.

Also, in this whole discussion, not once did I feel anger about any of the arguments. I was only a little frustrated that a lot of people were making counter arguments without having read up and learned how the sugar/ fat system works. Two years ago I couldn't have said the first thing about this topic, but I've read a Hell of a lot since then and am beginning to get a handle on what it is about. It is by no means an easy topic to get your head around.

Your observations… the earlier ones included… Have made me stop and think about what I've learned and to remember to look at the knowledge I have with a healthy sense of caution. And to be honest, I just don't know enough about nutrition and the biochemistry behind it to properly reply to you. If I tried to I'd be solely popping off conjecture.

It would be interesting to do a study on what kind of energy source hunter-gatherer's today use for most of their activities. Fat-based or sugar-based. From all I've read it would seem to be mainly (but not completely), fat-based. It would be enlightening to learn what it really is.

[Anonymous]

" In the past I have always named you directly when I was discussing things with you, haven't I? I have always respected your opinions. Please don't feel I was attacking you."

Thanks, Miguel. That makes me feel a whole lot better. It would bother me a lot if I thought I had lost your respect, which is reciprocated, by the way. I guess I just assumed based on the proximity of your post to mine, speaking of sloppy.

[Sharon J.]

In what ways do the above species farm/ care for domesticated cattle or food?

a bit off-piste, but a couple of fun links:

http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/leafcutterants.jsp

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/10/071009212548.htm

[Brian UL]

"It would be interesting to do a study on what kind of energy source hunter-gatherer's today use for most of their activities. Fat-based or sugar-based. From all I've read it would seem to be mainly (but not completely), fat-based. It would be enlightening to learn what it really is.'

In genral it seems that people in tropical climate eat more carbs and people up north eat more meat. This is easily explained by the seasons. There is a lot less plants to eat in the winter.

Lots of good info on this in this list of blog post:
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/search/label/Kitava

http://thatpaleoguy.blogspot.com/2011/09/coconut-and-starchy-vegetable.html

"{The ideal diet for humans includes a lot of possibilities. I believe the focus on macronutrients is misguided. There are examples of cultures that were/are healthy eating high-fat diets, high-carbohydrate diets and everything in between. What they do not eat is processed grains, particularly wheat, refined sugar, industrially processed seed oils and other modern foods. I believe these are unhealthy, and this is visible in the trail of destruction they have left around the globe. Its traces can be found in the Pacific islands, where close genetic relatives of the Kitavans have become morbidly obese and unhealthy on a processed-food diet." – Stephan Guyenet

I wanted to add you should continue with your low carb diet. Many people have found it works wonders for their health. Over time you may find you can add in more carbs -but monitor it closely. Some times people find that they need to stick to a LC diet.
good luck

hope that helps.

[Clint Hewitt]

Sharon,

Thanks for those links, very interesting stuff.

Wonder if the ants protect the aphids from other predators?

This past summer for two months I tried the Paleo diet or there abouts. I eliminated milk, reduced grains drastically, cut out potatoes and beans, and stopped/ reduced drastically eating candy (I have quite the sweet tooth) Basically was eating meats, eggs, fish, vegetables and fruit. While I had gone from 194 to 187 exercising and eating as I normally would prior to this, I had plateaued for a few weeks. I started these eating changes and got down to 180lbs and I had stopped exercising at the same time as well. Clearly there is something to it.

I am now back at 187, not eating as I did (those sweets again!) or exercising frequently enough.

My one consistent exception to the paleo was a substitute for sweets, I mixed ghee(dairy exception), almond milk, honey, cardamon and cinnamon warmed in the microwave. Very nourishing and tasty, it would quench my hunger pang I would not gorge on something like lets say a pack of cookies.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

My weight fluctuation on the PCT was not all due to changes in muscles, but it's probably an accurate idea that some of my problem was not eating enough protein on a daily basis.

My face tells a story of my weight fluctuation pretty well. There's not a huge difference because my weight fluctuation wasn't huge, but the 2nd picture is the thinnest I ever got (I got a little bit thinner but have no picture) and after that, I never got that thin again despite having ramped up my mileage to an average of 10 additional miles in my 2nd year of sectioning.

Here is my face over time.

Here I am on day 1.

Here I am after about 5 weeks on the trail. Notice how much thinner my cheeks are.

Here I am on day 1 of my 2nd giant section of the PCT. It's the following May after getting off the trail from my first 1/2 of the PCT. I've gained all the weight back that I lost.

Here I am in Oregon. My face is skinny again, but not as skinny as it was the previous year.

Here I am in Seattle. Note that my cheeks are filled up again and my double-chin has returned.

Me at the Canadian border. Can't have pictures of the PCT without one at the border. All I had was a disposable.

When I was first hearing about the Paleo diet I also thought it was a fad diet and that eating all that saturated fat had to be a bad thing and it's ridiculous to think we shouldn't eat fruit or grains.

Then I read around on the web, particularly Mike Eades, Kurt Harris and Andreas Eenfeldt. Both Eades and Harris use a lot of references in their online materials. They are quite science-oriented. I tried it because of Dr. Eenfeldt. His youtube presentation was friendly and accessible and he promised I would stop feeling so hungry so he's the one who convinced me to try it. The other two convinced me it wasn't a fad.

I read a few others. That Perfect Health Diet guy makes it so totally confusing and micro-managing as far as micro-nutrients. I got the "fad diet" vibes from him big-time. Some of the others out there are just too body-buildery and diet-bookery for my tastes. Even Dr. Eades seemed a bit too much like a pop diet book because of the unfortunate name of his diet book, but his posts are well-written and he explains things well and reads the original research. Harris explains it best in my opinion. Just avoid the Neolithic Agents of Disease.

So I've been avoiding the NADs and because I'm prone to overweight, I've been also reducing my carbs. It's really helping. Nobody has to force a grainless, breadless, sugar and fruitless diet on anybody. I'm not even forcing it on myself. Once I've lost enough weight, I will increase my carbs and to do that I'll eat more yams/sweet potatoes, more fruit and probably more beans and rice. I don't care what they say about beans, I really like Indian food and it's killing me not to have lentils or chickpeas every now and then.

[Anonymous]

"Your observations… the earlier ones included… Have made me stop and think about what I've learned and to remember to look at the knowledge I have with a healthy sense of caution. And to be honest, I just don't know enough about nutrition and the biochemistry behind it to properly reply to you. If I tried to I'd be solely popping off conjecture."

I think this thread has made a lot of people, myself included, reevaluate their positions. It has been one of the more interesting threads in recent memory for me. I went from knowing from zip about the Paleo diet to having a basic grasp of what it is about, which in turn led me to accept it as a valid for at least some people in both the forms that have been discussed here, ketogenic and non ketogenic, as explained by Brian just above. I still have reservations about the long term effects of a ketogenic diet, but that is a far cry from where I was when Piper started this thread.

"It would be interesting to do a study on what kind of energy source hunter-gatherer's today use for most of their activities. Fat-based or sugar-based. From all I've read it would seem to be mainly (but not completely), fat-based. It would be enlightening to learn what it really is."

I'll speculate that it would have varied with what was available, geographically and seasonally. Hunter gathers would probably not have had the option of turning their noses up at anything edible a lot of the time, given the unpredictability of nature.
They, and we, are well equipped to handle either source as substrate for energy production and, like all other mammals, have evolved to handle a certain amount of carbohydrate for glucose/glycogen production under normal circumstances, with ketone bodies as a backup system in the absence of adequate carbohydrate sources. I think the major problem we face today is that we have a metabolic system that evolved over millions of years trying to deal with a very unhealthy diet that it is not designed to handle, the result of the "progress" we have made in the last 200 or so years. Maybe it could evolve to handle this diet, given enough time, but 200 years is not nearly enough, so many of us are paying the price. My hope is that research like that being done by the Paleo advocates, along with other promising lines of research based on our increasing ability to understand the human genome at the individual level, will one day enable us to design diets tailored to each individual's genetic requirements. I would call that the ultimate diet.

[Anonymous]

""{The ideal diet for humans includes a lot of possibilities. I believe the focus on macronutrients is misguided. There are examples of cultures that were/are healthy eating high-fat diets, high-carbohydrate diets and everything in between. What they do not eat is processed grains, particularly wheat, refined sugar, industrially processed seed oils and other modern foods. I believe these are unhealthy, and this is visible in the trail of destruction they have left around the globe. Its traces can be found in the Pacific islands, where close genetic relatives of the Kitavans have become morbidly obese and unhealthy on a processed-food diet." – Stephan Guyenet"

Right on! I think this is at the heart of where we have gone wrong in the USA, amplified by the effects of an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and the stresses of modern life.

[Anonymous]

"So I've been avoiding the NADs and because I'm prone to overweight, I've been also reducing my carbs. It's really helping. Nobody has to force a grainless, breadless, sugar and fruitless diet on anybody. I'm not even forcing it on myself. Once I've lost enough weight, I will increase my carbs and to do that I'll eat more yams/sweet potatoes, more fruit and probably more beans and rice. I don't care what they say about beans, I really like Indian food and it's killing me not to have lentils or chickpeas every now and then."

Thanks so much for sharing your journey, Piper. This has been a great thread. I would encourage you to post periodically as you continue. I, for one, would be greatly interested to hear what you have learned.

[Anonymous]

"Yes, Archaeology! They study the health and nutrition of past cultures. Its certainly true that there is still a lot to know but they do know a decent amount from bones and food refuge and vessels. But your forgetting that hunter gather cultures have survived into modern times and studies have been done on them. We know a decent amount about their diets and health. It is fair to question how much they are like ancient hunter gathers- but we can learn a lot about diet by comparing their diet and health to ours."

No doubt, but I still question whether archaeologists can determine average life expectancies, or distribution of life expectancies, infant mortality, etc, from the relatively few sets of human remains excavated-just not enough data. I would agree about learning about their diet, and it is a potentially profitable line of research.

"I have to disagree with this. It is a fact that wealthier people are on average much leaner and healthier than poor people in this country. I think its easily explained by the much better quality of food the wealthy eat compared to the cheap easily available junk foods everyone else is eating. Think Wholefoods market and nice pricey restaurants where the chef would not use anything less than local organic ingredients. As modern countrys get affluent they start eating our junk food."

In this country, and perhaps Europe as well, but most definitely not in India and China. India, in particular, is experiencing a near epidemic of type 2 diabetes and obesity, centered mostly in the upper and middle classes, who can afford unhealthy food in excess, including Western fast food of late. They also do not have a strong tradition of exercise. As you said, as they get more afluent, they start eating "status food", i.e. Western junk food.

I have really enjoyed your posts, BTW. They have given me much to ponder.

My own diet, BTW, includes a lot of potatoes, sweet potatoes and other root veggies. No meat, but a lot of fish. Rice, buckwheat, quinoa, oats, barley, and yes, wheat. Close enough for us to be on, if not the same page, only a page or two apart. One further reservation in addition to the long term effects of a ketogenic diet is saturated fat from animal sources. It is a reservation, not a hard and fast rejection. Too many of the older folks in my family ate a lot of food high in saturated fat and still lived to a ripe old age and were not obese. However, they worked their butts off and were active hunters and fishermen, which may have had something to do with it. I don't know for sure, and one family's results don't count for much when trying to assess something like this.

Edited for content.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

"I have to disagree with this. It is a fact that wealthier people are on average much leaner and healthier than poor people in this country."

You know, that is probably true. However, I live in one of the wealthiest places in the US. I played a gig in Montecito, a little burg where all the wealthiest of the wealthy in Santa Barbara live. Oprah has a place there. I was shocked at how fat all the children were. I'm sure their parents are into raw food or vegetarianism and all shop at the farmer's market. But they were overwhelmingly pasty-white, fat and really dorky. Their parent were mostly slender but with pauchy bellies.

Compare these kids to the ones I see at the Jr. High in my neighborhood. They're almost all Latino and there's a greater proportion of skinny ones than there was at this event I went to in Montecito. Their parents, however, are mostly obese and the older the kids are, the more obese they seem to be.

I'd say that the diets of both are pretty bad.

[Miguel Arboleda]

Some very interesting links that explain in great detail what the low-carb diets are all about. The first one interviewing Dr. Stephen Phinney is particularly relevant, especially for information for what Inuit ate. Could be very helpful for your question about a ketogenic diet for hiking, Piper. He wrote the book, "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living", which focuses on long-term low-carb living.

http://tinyurl.com/7c4zq49

Another video interviewing Mary Vernon, an expert in helping obese patients.

http://tinyurl.com/86cbdbj

Article written in Harper's Magazine, 1935 by Vilhjalmur Stefansson about living among the Inuit.

http://tinyurl.com/7c9e8vv

Presentation by Andreas Eenfeldt on how the low fat diet pertains to our evolutionary history, plus a very detailed explanation of how the low carb diet works. The graphics he shows on the growth of the obesity epidemic in the last 25 years in the States is shocking:

http://tinyurl.com/86xhv5d

[Miguel Arboleda]

Too many of the older folks in my family ate a lot of food high in saturated fat and still lived to a ripe old age and were not obese. However, they worked their butts off and were active hunters and fishermen, which may have had something to do with it. I don't know for sure, and one family's results don't count for much when trying to assess something like this.

This is the common misconception about fat… that people get fat from eating fat. The science behind the effects of fat was already understood back in the 1800's, however, and clearly shows that that is not the case. It was only during the 1960's and 1970's that both the medical and political communities of the States willfully demonized fat in order to protect the interests of the wheat and corn lobbies ("Good Calories, Bad Calories", by Gary Taubes is basically an extremely well-researched investigation and critique of the demonization of fat and the deception that Ancel Keys and the American government under McGovern used to cover up the studies done on fat. It is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand why today fat is so maligned and carbs are so highly touted. Michael Pollan in his "The Omnivore's Dilemma", also goes into it, as do quite a few other researchers).

You cannot get fat from eating fat alone. There may be other health risks, but gaining weight is not one of them. This is because you gain weight through the amount of insulin you produce in your body. Insulin can only be utilized through either carbohydrates or, to a much lesser extent, protein. In the presence of fat alone, insulin does not act. This is why people who get fat always have high levels of insulin. It is the insulin that allows you to metabolize glucose into fat stores (and, of course, metabolize the carbohydrates into energy for the body). It is also why diabetics thrive on low-carb diets, since it is the spiking and troughing of excessive body sugar (glucose) that forces the pancreas to over-produce insulin and become exhausted. Diabetes is basically the state of an exhausted (Type 2 diabetes) or genetically non-productive (Type 1 diabetes, and rarer) pancreas.

The low-carbohyrate diet works to lower body fat because the body is no longer utilizing high amounts of insulin. Insulin is the key to understanding all of this. Many researchers and nutritionists call the low-carb diet a "low insulin" diet.

[Diane “Piper” Soini]

Low insulin diet. I will call it that from now on.

I will watch the videos later, too. I had a job between my two PCT sections where I listened to audio of whales (and the noise of industrial oil exploration). We had lots of pictures around the office of whales and seals and some interesting desktop background images of a whale hunt in the arctic and another of a guy about to eat a giant piece of blubber. Ew. Looked nasty to me. We had an inuit work with us for a little while and he said blubber was delicious and described all kinds of other things they ate which my memory has nicely erased due to grossness. I'd rather be in Scandanavia where I belong, with cheese and cream and reindeer stew.

[Miguel Arboleda]

Thanks, Miguel. That makes me feel a whole lot better. It would bother me a lot if I thought I had lost your respect, which is reciprocated, by the way. I guess I just assumed based on the proximity of your post to mine, speaking of sloppy.

Tom, it would take a lot for me to lose respect for you. We have enough history and even private correspondence between us to know where we both basically stand on things, and even if we have on occasion disagreed (rare), we've always found our ways back to mutual understanding. I sincerely hope that one day we get a chance to meet in person and hopefully do a hike together.

[BlackHatGuy]

So I was sitting on the couch watching a football game, resting my chin on my belly, when I noticed a bit of fuzz in my navel. As I began to pick at the fuzz, I realized it wasn't just fuzz in my navel, but a fleece throw I thought I lost! Whoa!

Time to lose weight.

So I'm going to try this Paleo diet, starting, as best I can, on Monday. I'll let y'all know how it goes.

[Anonymous]

" I sincerely hope that one day we get a chance to meet in person and hopefully do a hike together."

Let's keep that option. It would be a wonderful thing to continue the journey we have begun here in person for a change.

"We have enough history and even private correspondence between us to know where we both basically stand on things, and even if we have on occasion disagreed (rare), we've always found our ways back to mutual understanding"

I could not have expressed it better. My heart is at peace.

[Author]

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