Debunking the raw food fraud/diet

[Liam_snorkel]

yep.

27_milking_cow.jpeg

Does the image have to have a dark skinned person to have credence?

of course!

 

[Bribie G]

Everyone is able to drink milk up until the toddler years when the lactase enzyme is no longer produced, except for some populations in Africa and Europe where there was a genetic mutation that arose around 9000 years ago. For example in Turkey and areas to the East, the modern population is descended from Atilla the Hun and Ghengis Khan's mobs who didn't raise cattle. However (edit: since settling down and taking up farming as opposed to pillaging and mayhem) they do consume a lot of dairy as cheese and yogurt where the lactose is fermented out.



Paleo is a great system but modern food is nothing like the foods they would have eaten in the Old Stone Age, meats were leaner and veggies such as cabbage and carrots were mere shadows of the modern varieties, which are a product of Neolothic and then modern farming.

I read about the elderly couple doing daily marathons on a raw diet, in their case they were probably getting all necessary nutrients due to the huge amounts of food they were taking in. As an illustration I used to run 3 or 4 half marathons a week when I was in my 40s and typical food consumption consisted of things like 12 vitabrits in a huge bowl, five oranges, a large tin of salmon with a mound of steamed veg and that was only breakfast.

I hovered around 79 kilos. If I ate that nowadays I'd look like Clive Palmer in a year.

 

[Airgead]

On the whole cave man alcohol thing, there is a theory gaining some credence in archaeological circles that we didn't start brewing to use up spare production from farming, instead we took up farming to be able to brew more.

There is reasonably good evidence for brewing at a very serious scale in the earliest permanent human settlements. The implication is that we were brewing before we settled down and just scaled it up when we didn't have to carry it round with us.

My opinion (and opinion it is... unsupported by any firm evidence) is that humans never invented brewing. instead we evolved with various forms of alcohol (including from fermented grains... the whole paleo = no grains is rubbish... they ate grains back then they just didn't farm them.. it the whole gatherer part of hunter gatherer) and improved on them as we got smarter. Essentially humans have never not had alcohol. Its been with us since before we were human.

Cheers
Dave

 

[slcmorro]

The couple times oven had biltong, I've not enjoyed it all that much. The fat/oil doesn't render or the cuts have too much to begin with. I don't like the mouth coating it gives.

Also, jerky? Boring? You haven't had my peach lambic habanero death jerky yet, clearly!

Proper biltong is meant to be extremely lean. The stuff I make is cut from whole rump or topside, and is very lean indeed.

 

[Bribie G]

The Paleo thing isn't that there weren't grains, of course there were, just that when farming came in the population came to base their entire diet on grains (plus beans and potatoes after the Columbian Exchange) as we do today.

Anyway we did drink alcohol, Jean Auel of the Clan of the Cave Bear series definitely reports drinking wine from fermented elderberries, as well as producing sunflower margarine from seeds boiled in a skin over a fire, with Jondolar screaming over the horizon on his trail bike made from antlers and mammoth tusks. Who can you trust if not Jean Auel.



She also has a fascination with Jondolar's penis as you can see from her dreamy look.

 

[GalBrew]

Essentially humans have never not had alcohol. Its been with us since before we were human.

All vertebrate species produce the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase and can therefore metabolise booze, so yeah alcohol has been a foodstuff of the life forms of planet Earth for a while now.

 

[Midnight Brew]

This thread has evolved into an interesting discussion with some good information in those links.

 

[TimT]

Essentially humans have never not had alcohol. Its been with us since before we were human.

I like the theory. I thought when you put it to us yesterday, 'but hang on.... in my book by Stephen Harrod Buhner there is the claim that the only humans who do not ferment are Aboriginal Australians... so presumably that would indicate they came to Australia before we began to ferment things'.

However it would seem that Buhner is mistaken about this (his is not a scientific book, and his expertise isn't in Australian plants), since after a quick google I found this:

The Aborigines also used fruits like tamarinds and native lime to make refreshing beverages.11 An acid drink was made from the fruit of lawyer cane by squashing the fruit in water, and from breadfruit by soaking it in water.6 Certain flowers rich in nectar were gathered in the early morning and steeped in water. This was drunk fresh and also set aside to ferment.11 Some tribes pounded flowers in a wooden dish, then drained the liquid into another dish and mixed this with the sugary parts of honey ants. This mixture was allowed to ferment for eight to ten days and a brew was made to drink.6 Dried leaves of the red flowering ti tree were added to hot water to produce a tealike beverage.6

Recently we discovered this white waxy stuff on eucalyptus leaves in our neighbourhood was called 'lerp' and was considered a food source by the original inhabitants - it's a waxy protective coating made from plant sap that has been ingested and exuded by these wee little beasties called psyllids. I did start thinking like a mad brewer at that point, saying to myself, 'now, I'll just scrape off this lerp into water, add a yeast source, and....'

 

[JDW81]

This thread has evolved into an interesting discussion with some good information in those links.

Nice change from the usual "you're wrong", "no, you're wrong" banter that seems to be par for the course lately…..

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

So I was prepping to do my honey soy jerky, but I thought I'd get into the spirit of the event and see if I could do something nice without soy, which I believe is pasteurised (let's just pretend I had unprocessed honey).

I ended up doing something like this, but the site made me laugh so hard "As we know, soy is one of the most deadly foods." The hate of legumes among certain subsets of the health food world makes PETA's anti-meat stuff look positively balanced.

 

[TimT]

Jeepers. Imagine if you were a vegetarian for 'ethical and health reasons' and took those theories seriously. You'd end up ruling out soy (and soy milk, and soy sauce, and tofu) from your diet. What *could* you eat?

 

[Liam_snorkel]

If consumption was based on guilt we would eat and drink nothing at all.

 

[Mr. No-Tip]

If consumption was based on guilt we would eat and drink nothing at all.

I feel guilty about not drinking IPAs and Hefes early....more consumption...the one exception?

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

I think the way human diets have involved is interesting.

The Australian Aboriginal metabolism cant cope with modern western foods, a diet that is higher in sugars and processed fats. One of the issues with there diabeties problem. It is actually a noted and documented issue

And when you look at it, it makes a bit of sense. When you look at the diet that they evolved with over the 40,000 odd years they have been owning this land, it was a diet low in salt,sugers and fat. The animals they ate are generally low in fats and high in protein. The plants available generally where not sugar rich.

A lot different to the european diet that has been introduced, and the one we take for granted.

 

[Bribie G]

When early settlers arrived in New England they encountered Indigenous Americans who were actually farmers, unlike the plains Indians who hunted Bison and whom we are more familiar with via Hollywood (Apaches etc).

Their favourite feast, a "beanfeast" consisted of a huge fire pit lined with rocks that were heated thoroughly then lined with skins. Then a couple of hundred kilos of beans were poured in, the fat of a whole grizzly bear and many litres of maple syrup. Then covered over with more skins, soil and left for a day until well done.

The settlers report them as being fine healthy specimens, probably more so than the poor starved colonists.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

And the first settlers in Australia nearly died from starvation, but the aboriginals where healthy

 

[Bribie G]

Years ago I remember a TV show about a plane that crashed in the 1930s ? on a beach in the far North of WA, near the NT border. They died while there was an abundance of bush tucker, mussels etc nearby. Probably waiting for Maccas to be invented.

 

[Liam_snorkel]

And the first settlers in Australia nearly died from starvation, but the aboriginals where healthy

Well yeah the Dutch and French had been hanging around and basically said **** this place, there's nothing to eat and the natives are hostile. The poms thought it would be a great place to dump the Irish.

 

[Bribie G]

Inventory of the First Fleet.

 

[Ducatiboy stu]

Mmm..would be a different country if the first settlesr realised the how awsome this country is...

Now if we could just get the general population to realise how good native animals ( Kangaroo's ) and plants are actually good to eat and healthy.

Sorry, dont agree with this "Coat of Arms" & " But there cute " & " Endangered" attitude towards some species that are able to be used for human consumption and are easly able to be managed on a wide scale