Grokking Through the Seasons

[BarbeyGirl]

The "Motivation this Fall/Winter" thread over at MDA got me thinking:

Many humans, like many other animals, appear to have a natural tendency to conserve energy (by eating more carbs, eating more in general, and/or exercising less) throughout the winter months. This makes sense from a survival perspective.

Most of us these days, however, are not trying to survive in the same sense as was Grok. (If anything, our survival depends upon MORE energy expenditure than average, not less, and we don't face the winter/early spring shortages for which Grok would have needed his fat stores.) Additionally, we probably have greater aesthetic concerns than did Grok's culture, and are thereby motivated to remain lean year-round rather than permitting seasonal variation.

So, what's best? Rest up and fatten up in fall/winter as Grok would do, mostly on philosophical grounds (it's Groklike!)? Or keep pushing through, on a year-round basis, because we don't really live in the same world Grok did?

I'm going with pushing through. :cool:

[pkafka]

Barbey - first, btw, I like your avatar! I assume that pic was taken post primal conversion.

Anyway, this is an interesting thread, and it goes back to a lot of the questions I have about the primal way of life... Should we model everything we do after the cave people, or should we embrace some of the advances we have developed, and live healthfully, but at the same time mindful of our developed conveniences... I ask this question about fruit - should it be eaten out of season?!?!

All in all, I find this an interesting conundrum, and my belief is that I am open to try anything... But in the end, I am not going to do what cave people did, but do what makes me feel the best. However, those two things are very often aligned.

So I guess I agree with you - we gotta push through! Even though fattening up might be the most natural thing to do in the winter, I think i'd get a bit depressed if I let it happen.

-pk

[BarbeyGirl]

Thanks, pk. :) I must confess, though, that it's actually a pre-primal photo, taken when I was still "flegan" (my word for "flexible vegan.") I'm stronger now.

Maybe this isn't a conundrum after all...

It makes sense, doesn't it, to taylor one's lifestyle to the world in which one lives. Grok would have done the same. (When circumstances forced him to change hunting grounds, I doubt he said, "Welp, looks like they only have kudu here, and we're supposed to eat impala. Reckon we'd better kick the bucket!")

Very interesting about the fruit. Sure, we theorize that Grok was healthy on rare and seasonal fruit...but have we asked whether he might have been even healthier on more frequent snacks of berries and crabapples?

[pkafka]

Nice point! Cave people were healthy, but could they have been healthier??? good question, and the only way to find out is to do things a little differently than they did, I guess.

-pk

[chadwick]

Dr. Harris over at PaNu makes a great point, and one that is especially important since we will never really know how healthy our ancestors were. The primal/paleo diet is not about mimicking our ancestors. We are not going to all start walking around in loin clothes and dragging our knuckles on the ground! This gets lost on people who are not that familiar with the paleo diet. Instead, the primal/paleo diet is recognizing that this is how humans lived for thousands and thousands of years, and thus to get peak performance out of our bodies--what Dr. Harris calls our evolutionary metabolic milieu--we should eat and live life in a way that maximizes the genetic makeup of our body. Just because our ancestors did not eat X and Y, does not mean X and Y are not good for us! It is likely not to be good (such as breads, etc), but stuff on the margin is more up for debate (types of fruits, dairy, vegetables, etc). Only personal experimentation and scientific research will really tell us.

[Tarlach]

...but if our ancestors didn't eat something, how can it be good for us?

We haven't evolved eating it and it is foreign to our system. We do not have the physiology to be able to cope with it.

I'm sure we can handle similarities, but completely different foods may have unintended consequences.

[pkafka]

Tarlach - I agree that
We haven't evolved eating it and it is foreign to our system. We do not have the physiology to be able to cope with it.
I'm sure we can handle similarities, but completely different foods may have unintended consequences.

The question for me is less about what and more about how much... Our ancestors had berries, but they didn't eat them year 'round... does that mean we shouldn't? As far as I'm concerned, berries are healthy... now that we can eat them year round, why shouldn't we?

I am torn when it comes to answering this question, because on one hand, it would make sense to eat what is in season - cave people did - but on the other, our advancements have enabled us to eat that which is healthy year round... Is there something wrong with this take?

-pk

[Marnee]

They ate what was available out of necessity. Animals were much preferred. Would you go picking at bushes if you had a steady supply of fatty meats? Why? It's a waste of time. Remember that Upper Paleolithic coincides with the abundance of very large land mammals like mammoths and aurochs. And Paleo-man did not eat many times per day which is common I can see with the Primal peeps around here. There is anthropological evidence that shows that primitive peeps would have gorged on fatty meats and then not eaten for many days, possibly even weeks, before hunting again. I don't see where nuts and berries would make any difference to a peoples with abundant supply of animals.

And the idea that more berries and nuts would have made them "healthier" is contrary to what we know about how these things affect the body. If healthy means a significant net benefit to the body then fatty meat wins by a HUGE margin. In addition to the obvious support of health, there are no negative side-effects of eating fatty meats. There is no inflammation. There is no irritation of the colon. There is no disruption to the immune system. There is no tooth decay. With nuts and berries we have the following inevitabilities:


Sugar depresses the immune system
Fiber irritates the colon
Bacteria in the colon feed off the sugar and fiber, disrupting the proper balance of bacteria
Sugar alters brain chemistry and not in a good way
Sugar stimulates insulin production which leads to inflammation and disruption of proper function of other hormones and hormone regulation -- which leads to all kinds of other negative effects
Fructose metabolism results in a poisonous by-products including ethanol (and some sort of aldehyde thereof) and uric acid
Glucose uptake is preferred over vitamin C in cells
The bio-availability of vitamins and minerals in these things is extremely low and can only be increased marginally with the consumption of fat.
Sugar dissolves tooth enamel and promotes the growth of plaque and irritates gums


That is a really long list and there is probably more.

So what exactly are are the net health benefits of nuts and berries and crabapples? They will keep you alive if you are unlucky enough to be experiencing a lack of animals to hunt, and that is pretty much it. This pales in comparison to the benefits of fatty meat. Seems to me eating way more fatty meat and eating little to no nuts and fruits is the only rational course to follow. The facts of metabolism make it so. There is no getting around it. You might get away with it though, but that is a whole other story. Just because the effects are not immediately apparent does not mean they are not occurring.

[pkafka]

They ate what was available out of necessity. Animals were much preferred. Would you go picking at bushes if you had a steady supply of fatty meats? Why? It's a waste of time. Remember that Upper Paleolithic coincides with the abundance of very large land mammals like mammoths and aurochs. And Paleo-man did not eat many times per day which is common I can see with the Primal peeps around here. There is anthropological evidence that shows that primitive peeps would have gorged on fatty meats and then not eaten for many days, possibly even weeks, before hunting again. I don't see where nuts and berries would make any difference to a peoples with abundant supply of animals.

And the idea that more berries and nuts would have made them "healthier" is contrary to what we know about how these things affect the body. If healthy means a significant net benefit to the body then fatty meat wins by a HUGE margin. In addition to the obvious support of health, there are no negative side-effects of eating fatty meats. There is no inflammation. There is no irritation of the colon. There is no disruption to the immune system. There is no tooth decay. With nuts and berries we have the following inevitabilities:


Sugar depresses the immune system
Fiber irritates the colon
Bacteria in the colon feed off the sugar and fiber, disrupting the proper balance of bacteria
Sugar alters brain chemistry and not in a good way
Sugar stimulates insulin production which leads to inflammation and disruption of proper function of other hormones and hormone regulation -- which leads to all kinds of other negative effects
Fructose metabolism results in a poisonous by-products including ethanol (and some sort of aldehyde thereof) and uric acid
Glucose uptake is preferred over vitamin C in cells
The bio-availability of vitamins and minerals in these things is extremely low and can only be increased marginally with the consumption of fat.
Sugar dissolves tooth enamel and promotes the growth of plaque and irritates gums


That is a really long list and there is probably more.

So what exactly are are the net health benefits of nuts and berries and crabapples? They will keep you alive if you are unlucky enough to be experiencing a lack of animals to hunt, and that is pretty much it. This pales in comparison to the benefits of fatty meat. Seems to me eating way more fatty meat and eating little to no nuts and fruits is the only rational course to follow. The facts of metabolism make it so. There is no getting around it. You might get away with it though, but that is a whole other story. Just because the effects are not immediately apparent does not mean they are not occurring.

Marnee - Welcome to the Tribe. Looking forward to having a critical mind, like yours, around. I often try to look at what I eat with the same mindset in which you wrote this post. However, you have taken the way I usually think, a step further, and I appreciate that. I never considered berries and nuts a second choice, but simply saw them as another choice...well put.

Anyway, this makes some sense to me, but I still have some problems with it. Why do berries and nuts exist if not to supplement meat? Maybe people needed more than simply fat, and fruits existed so that we could supplement our meat consumption? We can pick a berry and eat it... The same cannot be said for grains(which I find to be detrimental to our health). I always believed that fruits were sweet so that we would be drawn to eating them, and thus benefit from the vitamins they provide.

Thoughts?

-pk

[BarbeyGirl]

pk, I think it makes sense for foods like berries and nuts to exist regardless of whether they're ideal foods for humans. (They may be better for other creatures, for example.)

That said, I do think Grok would have taken the time to pick berries and gather nuts. It may not be the most efficient use of time, but the desire for variety is intrinsic to humans.

On another note: Welcome, Marnee! :)

[BMcD]

It seems highly likely that we evolved eating a very diverse diet, including the occasional nuts and berries in season. The irony in my life is despite the enormous number of products in the stores, I'm finding it kinda hard to have a really diverse paleo diet the way I'd like with many different grass or pasture fed options and a variety of local organics. Hard to coordinate finding (hunting and gathering?) all that stuff in the big city.

[Posy]

Just because the effects are not immediately apparent does not mean they are not occurring.

Marnee hi. I agree with that. If we did know the effects of all foods we ate up front, most peoples diets would be very different today.
I’ve gone back and forth on this subject myself a few times.

I think we could go very long periods on meat only but not sure it’s necessary to do year round. Eating seasonally would make more sense to me I think. I doubt Gork cared about how much time it took to pick berries and I agree with the variety angle. Plenty of meat or not I think they would have eaten other foods they ran across. Now maybe the berries then were nothing like what we have today (smaller, more bitter)?, so maybe they weren’t as necessary or even as plentiful. Is the meat the same today as then? Perhaps there’s something lacking in today’s animals that the change in berries (bigger, sweeter) now help to make up for some how? I don’t know but berries would be a similar food so it seems like they would be ok added to the mix. Right now I’m eating a variety year round but totally open to more opinion on the subject!

Barbey I’m going with pushing through as well. No need to fatten up(eek!) and conserve energy because I don’t live outside in the cold or lack enough food.

[Acmebike]

+1 Marnee. Fruit (in abundance & modern form) approaches toxic levels of fructose pretty EZ. Fruit/berries have exploited us, not the other way around, perhaps? I'm all for pushing thru winter, in Paleo parameters. As I am of n. European heritage, I prefer to reference that paleo-history in my nutrition and activity.

[pkafka]

+1 Marnee. Fruit (in abundance & modern form) approaches toxic levels of fructose pretty EZ. Fruit/berries have exploited us, not the other way around, perhaps? I'm all for pushing thru winter, in Paleo parameters. As I am of n. European heritage, I prefer to reference that paleo-history in my nutrition and activity.

Hey Acme - I am pretty curious about your reference to Northern European heritage, how does their paleo history differ? Colder weather? Wouldn't that mean that you are trying to fatten up like your ancestors?

Also - interesting point about toxic levels, what amount of fruit would you consider toxic?

Finally Marnee's quote:
Just because the effects are not immediately apparent does not mean they are not occurring. Is so true. People are sooo myopic, they never look to the future... in so many respects, not just with what they eat.

The world would be a better place if people considered the long term effects of their actions... then, on the other hand, we must learn to enjoy the present. I studied philosophy in college and this is starting to remind me of a paper I wrote about the beliefs of Socrates/Plato... haha.

-pk

[Acmebike]

I think the toxicity of fructose is at a pretty low level. The obvious culprit in modern times is soda and juice. But I do think it possible to over do fructose intake simply with fruit. I've been reading recent posts on Paleo-Nu and Hyperlipid, and Animal Pharm, Nephropal, and the "sugar is sugar is sugar" video by Lustig, that show as much. Can't say I can peg an amount, but I keep my fruit intake to rare treats and limit it to berries. This is also why my alcohol consumption has approached nil, you only have one liver, and it is important! Very much so!

My "northern European" slant is just to be mindful of what many hundreds of generations of man ate at northern climes, and how they lived. I don't really think fall was a "time to fatten up and then relax for the winter"! Rather, winter brought HARD work, long fasts, limited but concentrated food (ungulates and their organs and bones, etc). So fall would have been a gorging on berries as available (which would have been RARE) and a time of preparing more for famine and a season of hard work/hard living. I've stuck to some fasting and picked up a Crossfit habit for this winter. We'll see, just a little paleo-reinactment, but nothing super fanatical! I'd say all humans are more the SAME than different (equatorial vs norther euro people).

But it is easy for me to play it "safe" by limiting hepa-toxins (anything that makes the liver work hard) and that means extreme restriction/elimination of pain killers, alcohol, fructose, caffeine, other prescription drugs, etc. But this winter will find me at Crossfit 3 x a week, long days skiing hard as the snow allows, long walks to work, carrying a load, and fasting often. But I'll still supplement Vit D3, do some things that seem to show benefits that paleo man would not have had available to him. Hope I make some sense.