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.

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.

Feeding America

I have seen this so called charity advertise on many billboards around the town that I live in. Whenever I see ads on billboards immediately a warning signal goes off in my head.

Billboard advertisements are not cheap. When you see someone advertising on billboards they are making a substantial amount of money and there is some profiteering going on.

Besides that I also see tons of ads online for them. One of the taglines is that 1 in 6 people in the US are struggling with hunger. I wonder what that really means. Just look at some of the people on their website who they claim are struggling with hunger and what do you see?

Obese and overweight families. Sure hunger and obesity are not opposites but if these people are hungry then what are they eating when not hungry to get so fat?

Besides that as is commonly known the population of the US is 35% obese and up to 80% overweight. How can nearly 17% of the population be hungry when at the same time they are overweight?

If I assume that the 80% of the population that is overweight is not hungry and 17% of the population is dealing with hunger then there is only 3% left who are not hungry and not overweight.

The US is known to be one of the wealthiest nations on the planet and there are only a total of 3% of the population who are not overweight or hungry?

I say to follow the money and be very careful with these charities. Do not just blindly donate money or any other valuable to just any charity without doing more indepth research. There has to be at least a small group of people getting quite rich on Feeding America and few who are really benefitting from the donations.

Earth Day 2012

Let's celebrate Earth Day! Last week was Earth Day 2012. April 22 is the annual celebration of Earth Day. It is an event that started in the 1970s which is meant to make people aware of the impact of our lives on the fragile ecosystems that keep life alive on this planet.

I was at the local Whole Foods store and I saw some tents and a few people standing under them. I was curious so I went over to have a closer look.

What did I see? Was it some recycling or reuse demonstration? No. Was it some save the whales campaign? No. It was a barbeque grill with an employee standing over it grilling hamburgers. Yes, Whole Foods celebrates Earth Day by grilling hamburgers.

Now if that is not ironic then nothing is. The cooking of food is the number two largest source of greenhouse gases in the world. The consumption of meat is the number one.

So Whole Foods in celebration of Earth Day was showing the world that grilling hamburgers is an earthy thing to do eventhough it included two of the most destructive behaviors that humans do which contribute to the destruction of the earth. Way to go Whole Foods, we need more leadership like that in the world (NOT!).

Food Combining and Instinct

Instinctively when we taste something that is sour we will reach for a sweetener to make it taste better or more acceptable. This is why the billions of cups of coffee people consume around the world every day include sugars and other sweeteners to make the toxic substance taste better. The same goes for almost every other beverage. These include teas, shakes, sodas, lemonade and even fruit juices.

Most of the time people use processed sweeteners like sugar, stevia, or chemicals like sweetnlow or splenda. Sometimes they use honey, molasses, agave, maple syrup, or a long list of other sweeteners. When someone starts off on a raw food diet, instead of using these processed sweeteners they reach for something like dates, dried figs or other dried fruit like raisins, or some even use the mislabelled "raw" agave syrup or dehydrated cane juice. Some will also use pure sugar cane juice.

This behavior is a continuation of what was learned in our childhood. If we don't like the taste of something, then add some flavoring to it and try it again.

Let's now go back to early man. These people did not have packaged goods. There was no grocery store to get a bag of white table sugar or anything else. There were obviously honeybees all around and therefore there was honey but the honey was carefully guarded by the bees and as humans without protective clothing trying to get the honey would have been a painful and awkward task.

There were also all of the sweet fruits around when they were in season but in the jungle it wouldn't make much sense to seek out some specific type of ripe fruit when you needed to find some nourishment. If for example the tribe came upon a tree full of underripe guavas and they tasted bitter, there is not much chance that they decided to go out to look for another sweeter fruit to eat along with the bitter guavas to make them palatable.

Most likely they skipped the bitter guavas altogether and instead just continued on their search for a better tasting meal. This allowed them to enjoy their food more and also get the best quality nutrition they could get.

I really doubt that anybody came up with the idea of combining a sweet food with a sour or bitter one to cover up the bad taste. Why then do we now nearly without exception do the exact opposite?

Why even consider eating or drinking something that tastes bland, sour or bitter when we have so many choices of much better tasting sweet foods? Why not just skip the bad tasting foods and instead consume the delicious sweet ripe and nutritious food?

Think about this next time you are ordering something to eat. Even if you eat raw gourmet food and are following a recipe, do you really want to mix some raw agave syrup with your cashew nut pate to make it more tasty?

Follow the laws of nature and eat one food at a time without any condiments or flavorings. Your health will thank you a million times over. Your body will love the ability to retrieve and absorb the nutrition without the toxic load or need to try to seperate the poorly combined foods.

Why Don't People Want to be Healthy?

Health is the natural state of humans. Most people think that we need to work for our health but in reality health is the natural state we should always be in.

I often get comments about the enormous amount of fruit that I consume. I often have dozens of bananas on my chair and by the end of the lunch period they are all gone.

People often say that it's cool to see this. Some say that I must be so healthy. Certainly this is a good reason to eat lots of fruit.

However, if they already know that eating a large amount of fruit, at least until satiated, is healthy then why is it that they do not do the same as I do?

Is it that they do not want to be healthy? They actually want to be sick or worse? I see no reason to behave in such a way as to harm my health by my selection in food. Why do they?

These people are not experts in diet by any means but they seem to sense that eating pure, whole, ripe and fresh fruit for a meal is healthy. They do not aspire to be healthy and just comment about how healthy others are.

I hope they start seeing what they are doing to themselves and stop their hurt. To know that you are hurting yourself but not doing anything about it is at least being an accomplice. Think about it the next time you feel sick, what did you do to make yourself sick?

Humans Have Canine Teeth: Therefore They Are Carnivores!

The title of this post is what I wanted to discuss this time. I have read on many blogs and forums that are frequented by people with less than perfect intelligence that humans are carnivores because they have canine teeth.

First of all, even if humans do have canine teeth that certainly in and of itself doesn't prove that humans are carnivores. It's not a definite proof.

There are lots of animals in nature that have some very threatening looking canine teeth and they do not eat the flesh of animals. There are also many others with big canine teeth that get less than 5% of their calories from flesh of other animals.

To justify eating as much as 65% of your daily intake from the flesh of animals because there are 4 teeth in your mouth that resemble those of carnivores is a bit beyond my ability to understand.

First, let's look at the teeth of a wolf. A wolf is definitely a carnivore. I do not argue with that at all. I have seen them devour an animal after they stalk it and then kill it. They love the scent of a fresh kill and consume the animal's body from head to toe even eating the contents of the bowels and blood vessels.

The picture above is of what the canines of a wolf look like. Do they look like the teeth in most human's mouth? Here is a photo of the teeth of a human.
The canine teeth are the third teeth from the front on either side and on both the top and bottom. Obviously to even the untrained, there is a huge difference between these human canines and the ones of a true carnivore. The human teeth are flat and barely stick out beyond the point where the other teeth stick out to. The wolf teeth stick out a great deal beyond the rest of the teeth.

Here is a picture of a gorilla's canine teeth.

These teeth are much more prolonged than even the wolf's teeth. They stick out way more than a human's teeth or even the wolf's. The gorilla doesn't kill any large animal to eat. In fact other than insects, the gorilla doesn't eat anything from the animal kingdom at all. Maybe they exist to frighten any predators away, but they certainly are not there to hunt and kill prey.

The argument that humans have canine teeth and therefore are carnivores has zero credibility. It is like saying that the moon is made of cheese because it looks yellow. There are lists as long as 150 items that show that a human is not a carnivore and not even an omnivore but I will leave it to the reader to check this out. I might continue on this in another post in the future.