Saturday, June 23, 2012

Mark Sisson Inconsistencies

There is a popular supporter of the "Primal" diet named Mark Sisson. He has a website and sells many products and potions. He also has written a few books on the subject.

If you don't know much about the primal diet it is sort of based on the low carb or Atkins diet. The idea of the diet is to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in one's diet.

When carbohydrates are reduced or eliminated from the diet the body is starved for energy and can not survive. Every single cell of the trillions that make up a living body requires carbohydrates all the time. In order to overcome this the body will turn protein and fat into carbohydrates.

This process creates ketones. These ketones are toxic and the body must eliminate them along with all of the other metabolic toxins. This requires a lot of extra work for the body and these extra toxins can cause diseases.

This process is a survival process and not a normal process. Normally our body was designed to consume vast amounts of natural carbohydrates and use them for fuel.

Mark Sisson has a question and answer page on his website. Here is one particular question and his answer following it:

What is your health philosophy?

Really, my health philosophy is surprisingly simple. I follow a diet based on an understanding of evolutionary science. I think it’s more important to eat, move, and live according to how humans are designed and not according to society’s artificial developments of the last 100 years. Fortunately, this regimen is not only incredibly healthy, it’s quite simple.

In a nutshell:

- fresh, organic, unprocessed food – no junk!

- daily activity – whether it’s the gym or a walk along the beach, it all counts

- plenty of quality sleep

- plenty of water, no soda or sweetened drinks

- antioxidants galore – the key to limiting stress

- a good fish-oil supplement

- lots of essential fats, reckless amounts of vegetables, and clean protein

- time for fun – don’t take anything too seriously – ethical behavior – because what goes around comes around

- taking responsibility for yourself and your life – openness to new things and ideas

This is where I have a problem with Mark. He mentions that we need to eat fresh, organic and unprocessed food. He then recommends eating moderate amounts of animal flesh. Animal flesh can only be fresh if you kill the animal yourself. I don't think Mark is out in the woods right now slitting a deer's throat.

I don't know where he gets his supply of animal flesh but certainly it can't be fresh unless he kills the animal himself. Organic for animal flesh is really a big lie. There are no organic guidelines for animal flesh. Most meat that is sold as organic is really the same as the factory farm meat. It's not easy to force animals to eat organic food, they will eat whatever they find. All meat has to be processed or it will putrefy in a short time. No meat is unprocessed unless it is eaten as soon as it is killed. For example a lion will take down an antelope and eat it within minutes. The lion will consume everything from head to hoof and eat it raw. Humans just do not seem to want to do this.

He says to get plenty of quality sleep. Further down the page he said that he sleeps 7 hours a day. The recommendation for sleep is 8 to 10 hours by every health organization around. He obviously is not even following his own advice.

In order to get antioxidants (galore) someone needs to consume a lot of colorful plant foods like fruit and vegetables. Meat and animal products contain none to a trace of antioxidants. If you are recommending people to eat animal flesh then you can't at the same time recommend they eat antioxidants (galore), because that is a conflict.

The part about ethical behavior is self explanatory. How can you consume thousands of harmless sentient animals, destroy the environment and recommend that others do the same and call that ethical. I believe that he is right however on the part about what goes around comes around, so Mr. Sisson, remember you said that and not me.

These are just a few of the inconsistencies of a supporter of the low carb or primal diet. If you read a few more of his webpages you'll find many more.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Trends in Alcohol Marketing

It's been a while since I posted anything here. I was just enjoying the weather and had a few short trips.

If you spend much time online, I'm sure you've seen some of the ads recently for alcohol. Not just beer and wine but the hard liquor is now going low carb.

I saw an ad for Bacardi low carb drinks. I had to check twice to be sure what I saw was real.

Why would someone who drinks hard liquor want to worry about carbs? Some of the ads also stated that they are low calorie. Do you know how much booze someone needs to drink in order to put on weight from drinking booze?

A person would need to practically live off of booze. That is they would need to get most of their calories from booze. This means that they would need to be intoxicated all day and night. This is the only way someone would possibly be able to gain weight from booze. The number of calories is small, less than most vegetables.

Why bother creating a booze that is low calorie or low carb? Most booze drinkers are not very health oriented either. Sure there are social drinkers who are health minded and drink once in a while. These people will get such a small amount of calories from the liquor that it's not even worth mentioning it.

Then there are the alcoholics. These people drink excessively and most if not all of them couldn't care less about their health. These alcoholics are the only people who would actiually be gaining weight from the liquor.

What are these companies thinking about when the develop these products? There is no target market that makes any sense. The people who want a low carb or low calorie drink probably don't drink much and therefore the amount of calories from the liquor that they drink is minimal even if they drink "full calorie" or "full carb" drinks. The people who actually would get a substantial amount of calories or carbs from liquor are too drunk to even understand the difference.

Besides they wouldn't care if the liquor was low carb or high carb as they just care about getting drunk.

If you have any comments, let me know, I'd like to see what you think about this.