A Moose in Love wrote:
> http://www.raw-food-health.net/Primal-Diet.html
>
> {
> Primal Diet and Paleo Diet followers are asking all the right
> questions, but they've unfortunately come to a number of incorrect
> conclusions.
>
> The primal diet, sometimes referred to as a raw meat diet, neolithic
> diet, paleo diet, or even as an extreme low-carb diet, stems from the
> correct belief that the processed, cooked foods modern humans rely on
> are harming us and causing disease, and that going back to the type of
> diet our ancestors lived on prior to the advent of civilization (which
> occurred only about 10,000 years ago, an eye blink in the history of
> the species) will relieve us of the diseases we suffer from.
>
> Grains, packaged junk, and all cooked foods are harmful to us and
> should be avoided, but instead of making the smart choice and
> returning to the diet our species originally ate in equatorial Africa,
> they've attempted to ape the later-day ancestors who got by living at
> the margins of the world.
>
> The Primal Diet = The Inuit (Eskimo) Diet
>
> The Inuit people of the Arctic regions of Canada, Russia, and Alaska
> have lived for centuries on a diet predominately made up of animal
> foods, with 75 percent of their calories coming from fat.
>
> Primal Diet Raw MeatThey didn't have much choice. Aside from a few
> berries, seaweed, tubers and whatever other greenery they could gather
> in their home's short summer, they were left with only animals to
> hunt.
>
> Prior to the large-scale introduction of processed junk food from
> developed countries, they were known for maintaining trim bodies
> despite all of their meat intake.
>
> Since western food started arriving within the last 80 years, many of
> them have become overweight and developed overt diseases like
> diabetes, which Primal Diet followers point to as an indication of
> where our society is going wrong.
>
> Plenty of meat is fine, they say, it's the processed, cooked food you
> have to watch out for.
>
> Because of this and the example of other meat-centric tribes, primal
> diet eaters believe the best foods are fatty meats, organ meats,
> dairy, honey, minimal fruit and vegetables, and coconut, all served
> raw.
>
> There are some variations of the diet that permit more carbohydrates,
> but most of the food come from animal sources.
>
> Pre-Western-Diet Eskimos Aged Early and Died Young
>
> Unfortunately, claims about the great health of Eskimos prior to the
> addition of processed foods are overstated. They are not the paragons
> of health meat-centric dieters want them to be.
>
> Primal Diet EskimosIn his book, "Health Conditions and Disease
> Incidence Among The Eskimos of Labrador," Dr. Samel Hutton reported on
> the Inuit before the addition of western foods.
>
> He studied them personally from 1902 to 1913, and had access to the
> detailed birth and death records kept by missionaries from the
> previous century.
>
> Hutton said: "Old age sets in at fifty and its signs are strongly
> marked at sixty. In the years beyond sixty the Eskimo is aged and
> feeble. Comparatively few live beyond sixty and only a very few reach
> seventy. Those who live to such an age have spent a life of great
> activity, feeding on Eskimo foods and engaging in characteristically
> Eskimo pursuits."
>
> The more you study Eskimo culture, the more you realize it was never
> free from disease, and, in fact, people of the culture suffered from a
> number of disorders we associate with meat-centric diets today.
>
> The Eskimos were very familiar with constipation due to their low-
> fiber diet, and they created the spirit Matshishkapeu, the most
> powerful spirit in their mythology, to embody it. The spirit's name
> literally translates into "Fart Man." In Inuit stories, he is known to
> inflict painful cases of constipation upon people and other gods (7).
>
> Read why meat causes flatulence and constipation.
>
> It's hard to make concerete statements about the health of the
> prewestern food Eskimos because there is not all that much data on
> them. Most hunter gatherer tribes have little data available on them
> from before the 1970s, which makes the insistence of primal diet
> followers that Inuit were originally healthy so hard to verify. No one
> has found any great evidence pointing to their good health.
>
> Modern day Inuit still eat tons of meat, though, and it's taking a
> toll.
>
> For instance, in 1976, before the worst of the processed food crisis
> hit them, they consumed 2,000 mg of calcium a day from all the soft-
> bone fish they ate, a huge amount. All the same, they had (and still
> have) the highest hip-fracture rate in the world becuase they consume
> so much animal protein from fish (19).
>
> Fruits and vegetables are extremely rich in potassium, magnesium, and
> calcium, along with other minerals needed for strong bones, but
> because they are alkaline and not acid like animal protein, they do
> not strip the bones of calcium to neutralize the acid (20-21).
>
> Most green vegetables have calcium absoption rates over 50 percent vs
> 32 percent for milk (22), but because animal food causes the body to
> excrete calcium in its urine, the difference is even greater.
>
> The more animal protein you eat, the weaker your bones become.
>
>
> Hint For The Primal Diet: You're Looking At The Wrong Tribes
>
> Unfortunately, over the last 10,000 years farming civilizations have
> seized most of the land previously inhabited by hunter gatherers in
> the equatorial and subtropical regions of the world, where our species
> had its start.
>
> If they were still extant, these would be the people we would do well
> to study. The Eskimos and other hunter gatherers remaining generally
> inhabit arctic, subarctic, and desert lands that are not useful for
> agriculture. The poor quality of their land ensured they were not
> destroyed, but it also ensured the diet they ate had to be at least
> supplemented by animal foods, if not predominatly made of it.
>
> Primal Diet YamaroExcept in far northern regions, scientific consensus
> has shifted in the last few decades from the assumption that hunting
> provides the main source of food for hunter gatherers to today's view
> that hunting was merely supplementary (1).
>
> In fact, there is no indication of the use of animal foods until the
> relatively recent appearance of anatomically modern humans (2). How
> long has the species been hunting? Only within the last 100,000 years,
> according to one estimate (3), and less than 200,000 according to
> another (4).
>
> Fossil teeth belonging to human ancestors found in eastern Africa
> suggest a fruit-based diet, and stone tools at a a 1.5 million-year-
> old site in Kenya were used to process plant materials, not meat (5).
>
> Among the !Kung of the mid 1900s, who lived in the desert and
> supplemented their plant diet with a fair amount of meat (roughly 30
> percent of volume), people lived much longer than the average Eskimo.
> In one study of the !Kung carried out before the large-scale
> introduction of western foods, out of 466 !Kung, 46 (17 men and 29
> women) were over the age 60, a percentage that compares favorably to
> that of elderly populations in industrialized societies. The elderly
> among the !Kung were noted for their continued vigor till close to
> their death, unlike the Inuit, who are considered near decrepit at 50
> (6).
>
> A Better Example For A Primal Diet
>
> Several extant hunter gather cultures provide better examples of a
> healthy primal diet diet than the Inuit.
>
> The Yanomamö of the Amazon rain forest have been significantly changed
> by contact with civilization, but the first anthropologists to visit
> them there in the 1960s found a group of hunter gatherers who ate an
> almost entirely vegetarian diet composed mostly of raw and cooked
> fruit, vegetables, cooked tubers, and a small amount of animal food
> (8).
>
> Their great health and longevity impressed scientists, who have made
> numerous studies of them. Their freedom from cardiovascular disease
> and low blood pressure are especially noted (9).
>
> Another group called the Trobriander, who live on Kitava, one of the
> Trobriand Islands in Papua New Guinea's archipelago, is of interest.
> They may be one of the last groups in the world eating pretty much the
> same diet their ancestors ate thousands of years ago.
>
> Primal Diet PapayaThe residents of Kitava live on root vegetables
> (yam, sweet potato, taro), raw fruits (banana, papaya, pineapple,
> coconut mango, guava, watermelon), many types of leafy green
> vegetables, and small amounts of fish (10-12). Less than 0.2% of
> their caloric intake comes from Western food, such as dairy, sugar,
> grains, and alchohol (13). Their total fat intake averages 20 percent
> of calories consumed, which is quite low compared to fat intake among
> industrialized societies or the 75-percent-fat diet of the Inuit (11).
>
> It's hard to figure out exactly how long the residents live. Their
> island is infested with malarial mosquitoes that infect many of the
> populace, and the lack of adequate medical care means they have a very
> high infant mortality rate.
>
> Still, during one recent study, out of 2,300 inhabitants of the
> island, 6 percent (138 people) ranged in age from 60 to 95. (14, 15).
> The 95-year-old woman was in complete possessions of all her mental
> faculties and reasonably physically active.
>
> Inhabitants told researchers no one had ever died from a heart attack
> or stroke, or even had exertion-related chest pains. Other than
> falling out of coconut trees, drowning, rare homicides, and various
> other accidents, they could not recall any cases of sudden death so
> common in the Western countries.
>
> None of the elderly residents exhibited dementia or poor memory.
>
>
> So Where Does The Primal Diet Go Wrong?
>
> The primal diet and paleo diet have several flaws, the most prominent
> being its low intake of carbohydrates from nutrient-rich fruits and
> vegetables, high intake of animal foods, and, consequently, high fat
> intake.
>
> The Primal Diet and Animal Foods
> It's possible very low intakes of animal protein will not impair
> health or cause disease, but there's a fair amount of evidence showing
> the more meat you eat, the more disease prone you are.
>
> Although primal diet eaters may scoff at studies of modern humans
> because their diets are otherwise horrible, there are hundreds of
> studies correlating increased meat intake with increased disease.
>
> Even when animal protein intake is extremely low (the equivalent of
> three chicken nuggets a day), a person's risk of cancer, heart
> disease, a host of other diseases, and early death is considerably
> higher than when a person eats less meat (16).
>
> One study of Seventh Day Adventists who follow vegetarian diets found
> men living an average of 83.3 years and women 85.7 years. That's 9.5
> and 6.1 years longer than the average Californian lives, respectively.
> Even those Adventists who ate meat just once a week lived shorter
> lives than those who ate it once a month (17).
>
> Another studied the meat intake of half a million Americans and found
> the prevalence of cardiovascular diseases and cancer decreased with
> declining meat consumption while age at death increased (18).
>
>
> The Primal Diet And Meat-Friendly Evolution
> Primal diet and Paleo diet supporters claim that even if humans were
> originally fruivores, the species has evolved to eat meat and our body
> has adapted to the strains of doing so.
>
> We have indeed adapted to meat. One study suggests that up to eight
> genes in humans allow for greater protection from meat consumption. We
> suffer less damage from meat eating than we would otherwise because of
> this adaptation, but this is far from suggesting it's beneficial for
> humans to eat meat (23).
>
> An adaptation does not mean that it will not harm us, but merely that
> it will harm us less.
>
> We have also started producing roughly 6 times more of the starch-
> digestive enzymes known as amalyze compared to our chimp ancestors
> because for centuries we've tried to choke down tubers and grains
> (24).
>
> All the same, we still have a great deal less amalyze production
> capability than true starch eaters like pigs, and starch digestion is
> still poor compared to our fruit digestive abilities.
>
> All the more compelling is the unmistakable fact that despite any
> adaptation, meat kills us.
>
> A basic medical text will tell you that you can cause atherclerosis in
> humans, monkeys and rabits -vegetarian species - by adding
> cholesterol, which is only found in animal foods. However, natural
> carnivore species like dogs and cats are completely resistant (25).
>
> The primal diet can't argue with death by clogged arteries. In fact, I
> think that's really the nail in the coffin of the primal diet.
>
> Perhaps William C. Roberts MD, author of 1300 scientific publications,
> numerous cardiology textbooks, and editor of the American Journal of
> Cardiology for a quarter of a century said it best.
>
> In his 2008 editorial, "The Cause of Atherosclerosis," published in
> the journal Nutrition in Clinical Practice, Roberts says that,
> "Atherosclerosis is easily produced in nonhuman herbivores (eg,
> rabbits, monkeys) by feeding them
> a high cholesterol (eg, egg yolks) or high saturated
> fat (eg, animal fat) diet… And atherosclerosis was not produced in a
> minority of rats fed these diets, it was produced in
> 100% of the animals! Indeed, atherosclerosis is one
> of the easiest diseases to produce experimentally,
> but the experimental animal must be an herbivore.
> It is not possible to produce atherosclerosis in a
> carnivore…"
>
> In other words, any creature that can get atherosclerosis is meant to
> eat plants. Any animal who cannot is meant to eat animal protein.
>
> Humans are clearly meant to be plant eaters, and eating a primal diet
> will destroy us.
>
> The Primal Diet: Lack of Fruits and Vegetables
> Primal Diet Grapes
>
> Even though raw fruits and vegetables play a role in the paleo diet,
> because of the high intake of meat, there isn't much room for them.
>
> This is a huge mistake for anyone interested in longevity and health,
> as fruits and vegetables keep us young and vibrant.
>
> Learn more about the huge role fruits and vegetables play in our
> health and longevity here.
>
> The Primal Diet: Too Much Fat
>
> Paleo diets contain way too much fat. The oft-idealized Eskimos get an
> unbelievable 75 percent of their calories from fat, and this has
> consequences.
>
> Read why high-fat diets are harmful here.
>
> The Primal Diet: Not Enough Carbohydrates
> I've yet to meet a Primal diet or Paleo Diet practitioner who managed
> to stay on their diet 100 percent for more than a year.
>
> Inevitably cravings send them backed to cooked, processed food, and
> most often, various types of carbohydrates such as bread and pasta.
>
> The reason for the high rate of failure is tied to the fact that we
> need simple sugars to fuel every cell in the body, from the muscles to
> the brain, and if we don't take in carbohydrates the body is left in a
> perpetual state of craving.
>
> Find out how you can get satisfied on your diet by controlling
> cravings with your mind and diet.
>
>
> The Primal Diet: Following Up
>
> It just doesn't make sense to think of our ancestors as eating meat-
> centric diets, nor the pre-contact Inuit as particularly healthy.
>
> It would be a far better idea to base a primal diet off of fruit-and-
> vegetable-centered hunter gatherers like the Yanomamö or Trobriander,
> who have much better health than the Eskimos.
>
> Better yet, anyone would do better fueling themselves with a healthy
> raw food diet made up entirely of raw fruits, vegetables, nuts and
> seeds. Find out how this amazing lifestyle compares to the primal diet
> here.
> }

I did do the raw vegan diet. Although I did like the diet it didn't work
for me because of the gastroparesis. There is just far too much fiber on
that diet for me. Made me very ill.