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a diet fit for human physiology

What we eat effects our functionality. Here is a brief instruction on what to eat for optimal functionality.

Principle #1: Food is sacred.

Recall the traditional blessing before eating: “Take this and eat it. This is my body….” The body is nourished by what we eat, drink, and even breathe. Nourishment is the foundation of functionality. (By the way, not only is food sacred. Everything else is sacred, too. )

Principle #2: The longer that humans have consumed a particular food, the better the food is for humans.

So, the core of the ancient or paleolithic diet is food that is wild and raw. Note that anything that we have to cook, like beans, was not a primary component of the diet of ancient humans.

In addition to things like wild berries, the primary distinction between the diet of ancient humans and other primates is the eating of wild animals. The high levels of two substances in the diet of certain ancient primates has been identified as the cause of the expanded size of the human brain over that of other primates, as well as the capacity for language and other “higher functions” of humans.

Those two valuable substances are Omega 3 Fatty Acids called EFA and DHA. We need both. The most concentrated natural sources of these substances are wild animals (though some supplements also can provide excellent sources of these and other valuable substances).

In modern life, we can get healthy wild animals either through hunting or out of the water. Also, we can

get food from grass-fed domesticated animals, such as cows or free-range chickens (including eggs). Grass-fed and free-range animals have an abundance of Omega 3 Fatty Acids, unlike grain-fed, “conventionally-raised” commercial livestock. Note that among the only creatures designed to consume grains raw are molds and birds, which have evolved specialized organs for digesting raw grains called gizzards.

The Omega 3 called ALA which is found in plants like hemp and flax does provide a fraction of the nutrition of EFA and DHA, but is much more nutritious than most of the fats in vegetable sources. Notably good vegetable sources of fat are coconuts and olives. The less these are processed the better, including heating them (cooking).

Principle #3 Organs are the most nutritionally-sensitive and nutrient-dense tissues.

So eat them. While fat is of great importance, as is protein, the highest concentrations of a wide range of essential nutrients are in the various organs. Again, the organs of wild or grass-fed creatures are the most nutrient-dense foods naturally available to humans, especially when consumed fresh (raw) or fermented.

Principle #4 Mammals are designed to consume raw milk, especially in infancy.

Note that humans may have only consumed the dairy products of other animals for around 10,000 years. Around that same time, humans began cultivating wild grains and sprouting the seeds to eat the much more nutritious sprouts and greens.

Around 100 years ago, the quality of dairy products was falling from modern conventional practices of raising livestock. Pasteurization of dairy products (and fruit juices and alcohol) became popular, as well as fortification with added vitamins and other “remedial steps” to aid in the sale of such substances.

Note that the pasteurizing or cooking or sterilizing of milk has similar effects to the same processes when used for other foods. The first cooking of meats by humans was to dry them out and preserve them as jerky, but primitive humans ate meat raw or only moderately heated (“rare”), starting with the organs and the fat, and then preserved the less desirable excess portions for later consumption or trade.

As for parasites, they can be killed using the modern techniqueof freezing “questionable” meat

Joel Salatin holds a hen during a tour of Poly...

Joel Salatin holds a hen during a tour of Polyface Farm. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(such as meat raised in unhealthy conditions like “factory farms”).

Generally, a small portion of fresh high quality meat (no more than moderately heated) is far more nutritious than a bunch of sterilized meat from sickly creatures that require anti-biotics and supplements to survive to adulthood. Similarly, those humans who have unusually low physiological functionalities (and insufficiencies or deficiencies of nutrients) that lead them to value anti-biotics and supplements are the ones who can benefit most from small amounts of the most concentrated nutrients from natural, ancient sources.

Principle #5: Beware of modern things like modern foods and modern medicine.

Avoid carbohydrates and gluten-rich, refined carbohydrates in particular. Avoid low-grade vegetable oils, especially when cooked. Focus on ancient fats from healthy animal sources as well as primitive or traditional sources of vegetable fat like coconut, olives, palm kernels, and avocados.

While the next commentary on modern medicine is not an instruction of what to eat, it is relevant to the subject of promoting health. Modern medicine is well-known for labeling various sets of symptoms as incurable, such as scurvy. Scurvy is just a label for a set of symptoms of the predictable consequences of a lack of VitaminC and the deterioriating of various organs and functions that arise in the absence of Vitamin C (as in the discontinuing of functionalities that depend of the presence of certain amounts of Vitamin C).

Joel Salatin gives a tour of Polyface Farm. He...

Joel Salatin gives a tour of Polyface Farm. Here he stands inside electric netting surrounding a flock of laying hens and their portable coop, dubbed an Eggmobile. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Note that the language of modern medicine in diagnosing various physiological states as incurable may be entirely a reflection of the relative comprehension or ignorance of physiology on the part of the one using that language. If someone calls some development incurable, that may simply mean that the person using that language does not understand the physiology and nutrition relevant to that development.

To a fully-trained  and licensed practitioner of western medicine, scurvy was functionally “incurable” (relative to the extent of their knowledge and competence). However, to someone moderately competent in the realm of basic nutrition, the panicked diagnostic terminology of “incurable scurvy” or “incurable disease” may be deemed something of a “mental illness” or at least a lack of maturity and competence. While modern doctors may desperately panic about scurvy and other so-called incurable diseases, even not having any idea what is going on and why and just reactively labeling something incurable, western scientists at least as far back as the 1930s have been documenting the deterioration of the health and functionality of modern populations subsequent to the popularizing of modern diets and modern food production.

Modern medications have been popularized for their capacity to interrupt the functioning of the immune system (like cough suppressants). While that result of suppressing coughs and other eliminative functions may be valuable in terms of getting an expendable soldier back on the battlefield or an expendable slave back to work, interrupting the functioning of the immune system does long-term harm (including the poisoning of the symbiotic bacteria in the human guts).

Joel Salatin and pigs at Polyface Farms in Vir...

Joel Salatin and pigs at Polyface Farms in Virginia. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Modern medicine includes some very short-sighted interventions to suppress secondary eliminative functions of the immune system. It would not improve someone’s health or nutrition to give them poisons that prevent them from having a bowel movements or urinating either. The idea of suppressing the immune system derives from military settings in which the immediate risk to survival is so high that long-term functionality is not a priority. Similarly, in an emergency room of a hospital, people may try interventions that are quite extreme which would be considered negligent if used with more healthy, stable people.

Medical suppression of the human immune system has it’s relevance, but it should not be misunderstood as a replacement for proper nourishment and optimal functionality. Further, when consuming dense sources of nutrients, be aware that suppressed immune functions may be activated. That activating of the immune system does not mean that ancient foods that humans have eaten for thousands or millions of years are poisonous.

An active immune system means that poisons are being eliminated. Those poisons may have been stored in the tissues for years or decades. Simply use moderation in terms of the amount of nutrient-dense foods consumed in any particular period of time. Note that much smaller portions of nutrient-dense foods will be filling than when eating nutrient-deficient substances.

Principle #6 Get very high quality food and consume it conservatively, transitioning gradually toward ancient methods 

For instance, if you have never eaten raw wild-caught fish, begin with a small, experimental amount of it. Transition conservatively by raising the quality of your foods and transitioning toward traditional preparation techniques, like marinading flesh in lemon juice or raw apple cider vinegar then cooking it, but later marinading and just heating it, and finally eating it at normal temperatures (body temperature or room temperature is more digestible than refrigerator temperatures).

Before transitioning to all wild or all raw, unless you have a dire health emergency, you might first transition through a diet that includes some raw dairy and raw, sprouted grains (or even cooked). Also, if you have weak bones, make bones in to broth and eat that. If you have an issue with a certain organ, eating a healthy organ of the same sort is a great place to start when seeking all of the components of a healthy organ of that type.

Also, if you have been eating much refined sugar, a sudden and total discontinuing of sugar consumption may result in symptoms of withdrawal from the addiction, which may include detoxification headaches. When quitting a substance as addictive as sugar, transition conservatively and consume a lot of high quality water (adding minerals is often very beneficial, even when not addicted to sugar).

Eating a lot of sugar can make someone sick to their stomach. Stopping eating sugar allows for the body to stop dumping sugar in to the fat tissues throughout the body and to begin to eliminate it. The body may respond to a sudden decrease in sugar consumption by dumping internal glucose stored in fat tissues and so a moderate sickness to the stomach may result. When quitting sugar, it is best to be drinking high quality water and you can experiment with consuming at least small amounts of very high quality rich fat, which is one of the most satisfying substances to the human palate.

By transitioning from a carb-based diet and metabolism to a fat-based diet and metabolism, energy levels may rise dramatically. This is due to the higher efficiency of ketosis relative to the aerobic metabolism of sugar (three times more efficient), which is itself about 8 times more efficient than the anaerobic metabolism of sugar.

Fat is the primary fuel for human physiology. Supplying adequate amounts of proper fuel will provide long-term energy. Energy drinks and other less-than-primary sources of fuel will have only a fraction of the long-term benefit (if any long-term net benefit at all) of even small amounts of providing high quality fat for cellular metabolism.

Kara’s video reply about her results and her dietary changes:

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This entry was posted on November 19, 2011 at 8:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

14 Responses to “a diet fit for human physiology”

  1. danijela Says:
    November 20, 2011 at 7:25 pm | Reply

    Food for spirit is more important then food for body.
    St. Frances or Cartusian monk or somebody who just hear friendly, compassionate word from somebody else, would agree.
    Human can be dependent and can be free.
    Human is adaptive to food, no food and other things.
    Human can be determined with body, and human can be above
    determination of body.
    At the end human can be afraid of dying and can be not afraid of dying.
    Who is not afraid of dying do not measure vitamins, minerals, proteins, sugar, salt and honey.
    Who is not afraid, just live – gratefully with whole heart.

    • jrfibonacci Says:
      November 20, 2011 at 7:38 pm | Reply

      Thank You! Can one live “gratefully with whole heart” and still measure or not measure? Is measuring incompatible with “living gratefully from whole heart?” Is anything incompatible with “living gratefully from whole heart?” Is “living gratefully from whole heart” evidenced by declaring a particular listing of linguistic categories as “things that are incompatible with living gratefully from whole heart?”

      If your focus is “live gratefully from whole heart,” then thank you for focusing like that and living like that. If evidencing that “I do not fear dying” is your focus, then I am afraid that attention to whether something is or not is in fact attention to whether or not that is or not.

      One cannot simultaneously be attentive to whether or not one is afraid of dying and attentive to anything else. However, with language, attention can go toward an idea about dying or about “living gratefully with whole heart” or any other ideal created through a linguistic constructing.

  2. jrfibonacci Says:
    November 21, 2011 at 1:19 am | Reply

    Angelina wrote:

    Thanks, J R. A great explanation of how the diet works.
    🙂

    I feel better having up’d my healthy & raw fat intake so far. I am also “cutting back” slowly on coffee..just to see what happens. I haven’t tried the organ meat yet but it is in the freezer (step one, yeah?) 🙂

  3. Head Farm Steward Says:
    April 17, 2012 at 6:45 pm | Reply

    “Take this and eat it. This is my body….”

    umm…that’s the blessing before taking communion (Luke 22:19). The traditional blessing before eating is “Praise God and pass the ammunition”…or something like that…lol.

    • jrfibonacci Says:
      June 17, 2012 at 6:00 am | Reply

      “Take this and eat it. This is my body….”

      Yes, that phrase is repeated during communion rituals. However, the idea is that it was also used in a private meal shortly before a particular suspect of various crimes was aware of the likelihood of an impending arrest and trial.

      Further, what if the same idea has been part of primitive ritual for many thousands of years prior to that? I find it interesting how little familiarity most Christians have with other cultures from which their “Christian” tradition so heavily borrows.

      • Head Farm Steward Says:
        June 17, 2012 at 11:26 am

        lol

        OK. So I’m ignorant of…sorry, unfamiliar with that idea. Can you enlighten me? Where in history did Jesus borrow that from? And can you explain it to me without the condescending tone or including “what if” scenarios?

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        June 17, 2012 at 3:57 pm

        For one thing, let’s consider the Jewish tradition of Kosher food. Did Hebrews traditionally bless food before eating it? Yes, that is how food is “transformed” from regular food to “Kosher:” by being prepared a certain way, then certified by an authorized authority as having been prepared according to various explicit standards, then blessed or labeled as acceptable. If that sounds a bit like how food gets labeled organic, that is because it is a functionally identical process.

        That brings up the subject of the alleged separation of church and state. Totally bogus! Churches were the original bureaucratic governments. That is why so many government buildings look like temples- because temples were also the commercial centers of ancient cities. That is where the tithes (taxes) were paid and where people went to exchange goods for the approved currency units (the origin of banking), and where disputes were settled (court systems). That is why Jesus repeatedly references being taken before the high council of priests. He was of course also tried under both civil law of the Romans as well as religious law. He was convicted not under Roman law (Pontius Pilate “wiped his hands of him” and said “I find no cause of action” as in dismissed the case), but convicted and sentenced under the Jewish “legal process.”

        The judges today are the priests of the Holy Roman Empire, wearing their priestly robes. The Judeo-Christian tradition was largely swallowed by the Romans within a few hundreds years.

        To the best of my knowledge, Jesus was actually a ranking officer within the Jewish system. This is why people came to him for his approval for executing the woman accused of adultery. They were not going to a regular civilian and trying to entwine a regular civilian in matters of Jewish legal system. The other judges were concerned about Jesus creating new legal precedents. They were sending him cases in order to justify charges of treason (more or less) against him, and that is exactly how it went. Popular scriptures do not specify such details, but any Jewish scholar could look at even the popular versions and draw the obvious conclusions. Further, there are many scriptures that were preserved outside of the mainstream Christian (Roman) tradition, such as in order to preserve them from the mainstream Christian (Roman) tradition.

        On to the original subject of borrowed content, the stories of Osiris and Mithras, which long predate the time of Jesus, contain an astonishing number of parallels, such as virgin birth and resurrection. The easter egg hunt and Christmas morning traditions (yule log, etc) also have origins far from the Judeo-Christian tradition.

      • jrfibonacci Says:
        June 17, 2012 at 4:31 pm

        In a primitive culture, weddings may be performed by the father of the bride or by another elder, as in the chief or the high priest. As villages grow in to cities, the process for getting married eventually has gone to the civil magistrates who function as the patriarch over the bride. One has to ask permission of the patriarch then follow whatever procedures, such as blood tests and paying for an application and a license, and then the patriarch can authorize the declaring of a marriage. In some states, judges recognize “common law marriage,” but in other states, just having a wedding in a church has no legal merit until the actual priesthood of the legal system authorizes the marriage.

        The modern churches of today have lost the civil authority that they retain in some cultures and tribes. Bureaucratic governments are the new ruling church empires, with extensive rituals and what is generally called “civil religion.” It is the state officers which conduct ritual human sacrifice (“capital punishment”), not the church officers, as in the case of less advanced cultures.

        MDs are licensed agents of the state. So are lawyers and teachers.

      • Head Farm Steward Says:
        June 17, 2012 at 5:23 pm

        Well, at least you’re passionate.

      • Head Farm Steward Says:
        June 17, 2012 at 11:41 am

        Oh, and I’m totally OK with Jesus using the language/culture of the day to reach his target audience. I think that is a fascinating topic of discussion and one I would like to understand better.

  4. Shout Out! « MyCadence Says:
    May 9, 2012 at 5:43 pm | Reply

    […] a diet for human physiology […]

  5. Lorra Says:
    June 17, 2012 at 5:50 am | Reply

    I dunno why you are linking to me when I am completely vegan and this article is NOT.

    • jrfibonacci Says:
      June 17, 2012 at 5:55 am | Reply

      I used to be vegan as well. I presume that your interest in diet has the same roots as mine: an interest in health and well-being and functionality. You may not be aware of the trend of “moderation” promoted by many formerly “extremist” vegans.

      Are you aware of this rather new book by some of the most popular authors of the Raw Vegan subculture?

      “Victoria Boutenko, Elaina Love, and Chad Sarno have been leaders in the (vegan) raw food movement since the 1990s. Each of them maintained and promoted the 100 percent raw diet for years. Since then, all three have independently arrived at the same conclusion: that a totally raw diet is not necessarily the best diet. One reason for their shift in thinking is the latest scientific research on the impact of omega essential fatty acids on human health. Studies show that if eaten in excess, omega-6s can cause inflammation and obesity. A typical raw food diet contains large quantities of nuts and seeds, most of which are extremely high in omega-6s and low in omega-3s.

      (Vegan) Raw foodists are not the only ones lacking sufficient omega-3s in their diet. Because omega-3s are easily damaged by heat, anyone whose diet is high in processed foods and oils probably has an omega-3 deficiency. Many symptoms of this deficiency can be mistaken for other health problems or nutrient deficiencies, so few people realize the cause of their ailments. Boutenko’s chapters on omegas provide readers more in-depth nutritional information. One hundred recipes—from raw to steamed and lightly cooked dishes, from appetizers to desserts—offer readers the means to enjoy a more sustainable, healthy, and energetic lifestyle.”

      Here are my comments. Omega 3s from plant sources can be converted into the two Omega 3 acid chain forms which are useful biochemically. However, the Omega 3s in flax or hemp are around 5% as nourishing as the Omega 3s in things like fish.

      Anyway, I still think it is very interesting that many people are so quick to dismiss the immense scientific evidence showing that eating meat was the key to the vastly improved neurological functionality of homo sapiens over homo habilis and homo erectus and the other higher primates.

  6. mattharkins Says:
    June 17, 2012 at 8:18 am | Reply

    Nice one.

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