"What is Paleo?" - Video by Alex Johnson

[JSN]

The animals' genetic makeup didn't significantly change when we domesticated them although I'm sure there was some artificial selection. A couple thousand years doesn't change a chicken into something else entirely.

Also, Chinese peasants for the most part eat noodles. You can only grow rice in the very south of China, and it's more expensive. Rice is a treat for the poorest of poor.

if it's genetic makeup didn't significantly change, then why is it so genetically different? or why can you accept that a crop can be changed significantly through domestication but an animal cannot in the same time frame? the generation times of some domesticated animals are shorter than some crops, especially in colder climates. and that's not to mention factors unrelated to genetics. they eat less varied diets, they receive care from the people who will eat them, they don't mature as much, don't move as much, variable variable variable...

 

[canadapride**]

That's a strawman argument and you know it. I'm not really a Paleo guy, but I'm sure you can come up with something better than that. Muscle tissue is extremely similar between animals from a nutritional standpoint, especially if you're comparing it to any kind of plant matter.

Well, not just muscle tissue, but fat, nutrients, and all that other stuff. For example, kangaroo are not domesticated, they don't produce hella methane, they have less fat, more omegas, nutrients, ect.

Plus, we just don't eat muscle tissue, we're supposed to eat the organs and bones.

When I learned that cows' gas affects the green house emissions more than cars, I knew something was up.

 

[turbozed]

if it's genetic makeup didn't significantly change, then why is it so genetically different? or why can you accept that a crop can be changed significantly through domestication but an animal cannot in the same time frame? the generation times of some domesticated animals are shorter than some crops, especially in colder climates. and that's not to mention factors unrelated to genetics. they eat less varied diets, they receive care from the people who will eat them, they don't mature as much, don't move as much, variable variable variable...

Okay, but if we feed them the same diet they had, and let them move around doing whatever chickens do (as they do in some farms and in many of the poorer countries I've visited), then that factor is out and you have the same chicken.

I don't think you're really understanding the nuances between significant evolution, and selection. In the end, nothing in the past couple thousand years will change chicken muscle protein to something different altogether. We might've breeded chickens with bigger breasts, or are more docile, but those characteristics aren't really important to what we're using them for.

They might look different (think about it this way: if we kill everyone in the world except Asians and only breed Asian people, are they now not human anymore and their DNA changes? no, we just eliminated variety and stressed certain cosmetic characteristics), they might have different macro profiles, but the macros *themselves* will not change. Once again, evolution doesn't work quick enough for the latter to happen. Artificial selection will not cause it either. You'd need to do some serious genetic engineering (which maybe coming in the future).

 

[canadapride**]

^^^^
Hopefully you're right. I'm still not quite on board. Domesticated animals don't look anything like the animals they came from.

So, do cows still produce as much methane if they're grass fed? I'm also curious about the fatty acid and nutrient break down of natural domesticated animals vs their wild counterparts.

 

[JSN]

in the future, please refrain from saying things along the lines of "you're not understanding the nuances of ________" when you're so clearly out of your depth. just a quick few points:

when we talk about the nutritional profile of some type of meat, we aren't simply referring to the nutrition gained just through the consumption of the muscles much less the proteins of said muscles.

yes, amino acid profile can change significantly quickly with artificial selection. ever notice how domesticated dogs have any number of morphological differences from wolves, a species they can interbreed with? most of those are due to, you guess, it, changes in genetic code, and their protein expression. change 3 bases on the dna and you have a protein that's changed.

when you eat an animal, you eat more than just the biomass of the skeletal muscle fibers. you eat its fat, maybe some organs, some different proteins in tendons maybe, a little glycogen, all kinds of smaller nutrients from the matrices inside and outside the cells, etc.

nutritional profile of an animal consumed comes down to far more than raw genetics. it doesn't matter what it's potential was, if it eats corn for 6 weeks and then gets eaten, it's not going to contain many of the nutritional advantages of wild.

under your definitions of evolution, i guess we're all just prokaryotic cells, huh? after all, our genetic makeup has just changed. it doesn't mean we're something different. confucius say: no one win dumb semantics battle.

 

[JSN]

^^^^
Hopefully you're right. I'm still not quite on board. Domesticated animals don't look anything like the animals they came from.

So, do cows still produce as much methane if they're grass fed? I'm also curious about the fatty acid and nutrient break down of natural domesticated animals vs their wild counterparts.

the methane is produced by fauna in their digestive tract. it's a byproduct of cellulose digestion and is something that especially must occur when they eat grass, which is something that an animal on its own cannot get much nutrition out of.

 

[turbozed]

^^^^
Hopefully you're right. I'm still not quite on board. Domesticated animals don't look anything like the animals they came from.

So, do cows still produce as much methane if they're grass fed? I'm also curious about the fatty acid and nutrient break down of natural domesticated animals vs their wild counterparts.

I'm rather confident about it since the science seems to support it. Think about it this way: If we decided to breed and eat humans, and we for some odd reason chose to breed only midgets, their muscle tissue and fat should be made of the same stuff as normal people. We would look like an entirely different species though. I'm sure we were smart enough in the past not to choose the most diseased and sickly chickens to breed (or 'abnormal' in the case of midgets). Docility was probably important, but I don't see how that can influence anything nutrition wise.

On the other questions: I'm under the impression that grass fed cows do produce less methane and wild animals are generally much leaner than their wild counterparts. Whether this is due to lifestyle and diet mostly (we've seen how important this is to humans right?) I don't know. We'd have to release them into the wild at an early age and reproduce their initial living conditions to know for sure (assuming they survive). So far, I don't know if anyone has done this.

You up to raiding a farm and stealing baby chicks for experimentation?

 

[Rowan11088]

yes, amino acid profile can change significantly quickly with artificial selection. ever notice how domesticated dogs have any number of morphological differences from wolves, a species they can interbreed with? most of those are due to, you guess, it, changes in genetic code, and their protein expression. change 3 bases on the dna and you have a protein that's changed.

You seem intent on trying to sound more knowledgeable than you are. Here's a hint, being concise says a lot more about intelligence than big words.

How on earth do intra-species variations in DNA have anything to do with amino acid profiles? Are you just making things up now? Yes, dogs vary widely in their appearance. So do human beings. Yet somehow our chemical makeup is almost identical from person to person. What particular evolutionary pressure do you believe would cause these animals to alter their tissue so drastically as to make it less nutritious?

And really all of this is getting off the point, because the real issue is the proportion of our diet coming from different sources. Even if there was absolutely no change in the content of our food, it's the fact that we eat so much more of things that we evolved to utilize rarely.

 

[turbozed]

in the future, please refrain from saying things along the lines of "you're not understanding the nuances of ________" when you're so clearly out of your depth. just a quick few points:

Sorry, I wasn't trying to sound argumentative. Read it again without that slant and maybe it won't sound so bad.

when we talk about the nutritional profile of some type of meat, we aren't simply referring to the nutrition gained just through the consumption of the muscles much less the proteins of said muscles.

For our discussion, my initial point of view was just limited to that. If you want to expand the scope, that's cool too, but that changes my position as well.

yes, amino acid profile can change significantly quickly with artificial selection. ever notice how domesticated dogs have any number of morphological differences from wolves, a species they can interbreed with? most of those are due to, you guess, it, changes in genetic code, and their protein expression. change 3 bases on the dna and you have a protein that's changed.

This is interesting. How does their genetic code change naturally just through breeding? A mutation exposing a different trait will occur, and this might be artificially selected, but I don't see how this would apply to people who domesticated chickens. Would they even have known or cared about protein makeup? How do they "change 3 bases on the dna" using nothing but breeding? I'm not being argumentative here, i just don't understand how this applies in this situation at all (maybe I'm not very creative). Could you elaborate more on protein expression?

when you eat an animal, you eat more than just the biomass of the skeletal muscle fibers. you eat its fat, maybe some organs, some different proteins in tendons maybe, a little glycogen, all kinds of smaller nutrients from the matrices inside and outside the cells, etc.

Well I don't eat the organs very much, and yes I eat the fat. Not much else to say here since it doesn't seem like we disagree on anything in this statement

nutritional profile of an animal consumed comes down to far more than raw genetics. it doesn't matter what it's potential was, if it eats corn for 6 weeks and then gets eaten, it's not going to contain many of the nutritional advantages of wild.

Yes, I completely agree with you here. See post above where I used the midgets analogy.

under your definitions of evolution, i guess we're all just prokaryotic cells, huh? after all, our genetic makeup has just changed. it doesn't mean we're something different. confucius say: no one win dumb semantics battle.

No I wouldn't agree with that. I don't see where you're getting that from. However, yes I agree that nobody wins semantics battles. I don't think we're disagreeing much on fundamental points here. You think maybe this is a non-argument and you're reacting negatively to what sounded like arrogance or argumentativeness on my part? Because I didn't mean that sorry.

............

 

[paolo27th]

This paleo thing seems just like the latest fad. Ok, I may see some merit to it but it`s not something I`m going to take as religiously as some of the guys on this board any time soon.

 

[turbozed]

This paleo thing seems just like the latest fad. Ok, I may see some merit to it but it`s not something I`m going to take as religiously as some of the guys on this board any time soon.

There are few people that follow Paleo religiously on this board. Even though I defend it and try to clarify the science behind it at times, I'm still drinking my milk, eating my oats, and snacking on yogurt and cheese (and splurging with pizza).

If the science becomes more accepted, then it wouldn't be just a 'fad' but more a base of knowledge for nutrition. Truth generally sticks around for a long time.

 

[turbozed]

How on earth do intra-species variations in DNA have anything to do with amino acid profiles? Are you just making things up now? Yes, dogs vary widely in their appearance. So do human beings. Yet somehow our chemical makeup is almost identical from person to person. What particular evolutionary pressure do you believe would cause these animals to alter their tissue so drastically as to make it less nutritious?

I think what he's trying to say is that the combination of short animal life spans and artificial selection (by humans intentionally trying to enhance a certain trait) can cause a lot of variation among species. I would agree with that. However, I don't see the link where humans were able to find animals exhibiting differing traits of "protein expression" (which I know nothing about and will not speculate on how rare that would be) and then selectively breed them when there seems to be (a) no impetus to care, and (b) not enough knowledge about genetics for humans to have differentiated them in the first place.

 

[canadapride**]

I'm rather confident about it since the science seems to support it. Think about it this way: If we decided to breed and eat humans, and we for some odd reason chose to breed only midgets, their muscle tissue and fat should be made of the same stuff as normal people. We would look like an entirely different species though. I'm sure we were smart enough in the past not to choose the most diseased and sickly chickens to breed (or 'abnormal' in the case of midgets). Docility was probably important, but I don't see how that can influence anything nutrition wise.

On the other questions: I'm under the impression that grass fed cows do produce less methane and wild animals are generally much leaner than their wild counterparts. Whether this is due to lifestyle and diet mostly (we've seen how important this is to humans right?) I don't know. We'd have to release them into the wild at an early age and reproduce their initial living conditions to know for sure (assuming they survive). So far, I don't know if anyone has done this.

You up to raiding a farm and stealing baby chicks for experimentation?

I am somewhat confident that pasture-raised domesticated animals are net healthy. I have a feeling though that wild animals may be more healthy. Many fruits and veggies are made to grow faster and tastier. I remember reading how blueberries used to be small, sour, grow slow, wrinkly, but had loads more nutrients including several times the amount of vitamin C. Now their bigger, juicier, tastier, grow fast, more resistant, ect.

Now, the modern blue berry is still healthy, but the wild blueberry is healthier. It's just that wild produce can't sustain today's population.

 

[paolo27th]

There are few people that follow Paleo religiously on this board. Even though I defend it and try to clarify the science behind it at times, I'm still drinking my milk, eating my oats, and snacking on yogurt and cheese (and splurging with pizza).

If the science becomes more accepted, then it wouldn't be just a 'fad' but more a base of knowledge for nutrition. Truth generally sticks around for a long time.

Yes, my grandparents lived on spaghetti, olive oil and cheese - being Italian - and they lived well into their 80`s. I like to think that I eat better than them - I heat way more fresh vegetables, lean meat and fish, less dairy and less carbs. Still I

 

[turbozed]

Yes, my grandparents lived on spaghetti, olive oil and cheese - being Italian - and they lived well into their 80`s. I like to think that I eat better than them - I heat way more fresh vegetables, lean meat and fish, less dairy and less carbs. Still I

 

[Lubaolong]

This paleo thing seems just like the latest fad.

I'm sure in a couple years, it will be discredited, and posters on here will be onto something else. Not long ago it was Atkin's, then Fasting and Detoxification, then Raw Foods, then Low-Carb again, Fit for Life was in there somewhere, and now Paleo.

 

[IronMaidenfan#1]

Yes, my grandparents lived on spaghetti, olive oil and cheese - being Italian - and they lived well into their 80`s. I like to think that I eat better than them - I heat way more fresh vegetables, lean meat and fish, less dairy and less carbs. Still I

 

[T_Money_]

That video was pretty fucking gay. I can't believe the number a person "with one of these" would call bullshit on what he says. Right, so there's a difference between growing food in your garden and mass producing using machines? If he's only talking about the artificial shit (which, btw, many farmers use organic pesticides and fertilizers) than he may have a small point, but calling organized ag bad for someone is "fucking retarded" (said in a Mickey Mouse voice). Same thing with those cows. This motherfucker has no idea how the fuck cows are raised. I'd bet my ass that the cows in his "free rangin'" pic are cows out to pasture. They only go to feed yards to get their final fat addition and get shipped or slaughtered. So much more in that video was fucked...

I still don't understand why people believe that just because grok did or didn't eat something, they shouldn't either. I wonder if they ever stopped to realize how many VEGGIES and FRUITS have only been domesticated in the past 10,000 years. Or the fact that cows and chickens have only been domesticated in that same time frame. Ever stop to think that maybe the animals a million years ago were healthier and leaner because they had to run the fuck away from wolves and bears and, gasp, humans. Because I mean, free range beef and chickens pecking around the ol' barnyard definitely have the same kind of activity levels as a flightless bird or a dumb, slow herbivore did while running from starving carnivours.

 

[MikeMartial]

Lol. JSN, is that you??

I don't really get what you don't get about the clip. All the guy is doing is attempting to "explain" what a Paleo/Primal/HG diet is composed of, and said reasons for follow it. Are you actually arguing that free-range, grass fed cattle isn't a better option than conventionally feedlot raised grain fed cattle? If you are, then I got nothing, man.

The point of domestication is moot, also; if one chooses to follow a Paleo diet, then obviously you have to attempt to do it with the constraints of modern society. No one is going to argue that the flora and fauna of 2-fucking-million-BC was healthier than what's found today. That's just a pretty solid assumption. But buying from a locally grown organic farmer, versus something off the shelf from Safeway that came from who knows where, sprayed with who knows what? Once again, the optimal choice seems like common sense.

 

[T_Money_]

Yes, it is an attempt at an explanation, but it is also an indictment against modern agriculture. And I have a huge problem with that. You buy organic and free range and you pay the extra price for it. Assuming you have even a limited amount of knowledge on economics, do you think you're paying more strictly because you value it more, or because of the comparitive cost and inefficiency of producing food using those practices? I bring this up because advocating paleo to society is not an attainable or sustainable goal. And that video claiming that it's an easy choice is fucking retarded. If health is the goal, living and eating (in calorie and macro amounts, not food types) like grok is going to have a much bigger impact than avoiding some foods and celebrating others. Saying that eating like grok will automatically make your health better is bullshit. It doesn't even make sense on a conceptual level, because it requires that we evolved on the exact diet that our body favors. Why in the fuck would you believe that? I just don't understand what evidence there is that ANYTHING evolves into something perfectly suited for that exact environment he is present in. Everything evolves to be just a little bit better than its competition. Grok scavenged and ate anything that he thought he could. You wanna go eat roadkill to emulate him? Not to mention, we moved to parts of the globe with completely different food sources. So I guess that only the original grok had the optimal diet, after that diets just got farther and farther from optimal.