Yes and no. Food stops becoming an enjoyable activity, and just becomes fuel. If you're hungry, in the true sense of the word, you'll have meat and fat and ask for seconds. Fat adaptation works because if you have fat around you, your hunger signals tends to fade as you're already carrying a significant amount of energy.
The fact that carbs and sugar are so sought after is great when you're a paleolithic man, but is the cause of the modern obesity epidemic - it's an energy source than can be easily stored and accumulated around the body, so our taste buds have evolved to encourage us to eat plenty, because it was VERY scarce until recently.
If you're really hungry you're going to ask for seconds for everything.
Source: Fussy 11 year old me stuck in a summer camp with awful food. The first morning there I refused to eat and after breakfast they took us hiking up some mountains for 4 hours or so. For lunch I asked for seconds of their awful food and I enjoyed it :-)
Tuesday: cat gets porridge again. It looks at it, sights and exclaims: porridge! And walks away.
Wednesday: cat gets porridge again. It looks at it in a semi-curious way. Hmm, porridge.. And walks away.
Sunday: cat gets porridge again. It looks at the porridge, its eyes fully focused on it. It smells it.. It walks around the plate trying to catch even more smell of it. And then it screams: porridge!!!!!!! And eats it all in just a few large bites.
But probably the better idea would just be for us to ration snacks more closely throughout the middle of the day.
Spring is here. Any day we can stop eating porridge!
In the past, it wasn't so much that carbs were rare as calories in general were rare, and carbs were merely the most desirable. If you're an athletic hunter gatherer, you want as many carbs as possible for fuel so you don't have to switch over to your small reserve of fat and give up your proteins along the way. On the other hand in the modern day it's easy to get more carbs than we can burn in a short period of time so we have a lot of excess calories that get added to our emergency supply. Since we actually have to go through a good bit of effort to starve in the modern world, we never switch over to our emergency supply and thus it never depletes (ie we get and stay fat).
Of course you crave carbs after eating mostly proteins and fat - as far as your caveman brain is concerned, you are starving and need real food. It's just an unfortunate reality of our modern civilization that most of us don't have the metabolism to support a caveman's diet.
90% of curries are keto friendly, Thai food that doesn't involve noodles or rice, a-ok, tons of Chinese dishes are also 100% keto!
Going on any sort of restricted diet is going to involve learning how to improve your cooking game, but after years of Keto I can put together meals for large groups of people that are 100% keto and people won't even notice, and that is including the hazelnut cookies with chocolate ganache for dessert!
> Would question the whole „carbs where scarce, so we evolved to overfeed on them“ dogma
I agree historical evidence may be lacking, but a large percent of the population[1] do overfeed on carbs and a mix of carbs+fat, in a way that is has dramatic health consequences.
The way I always like to put it is, between a stuffed baked potato, and a steak, what will people at more calories of when given a chance? I know for me it is the potatoes, I can easily go through 2 entire potatoes, stuffed with sour cream, chive, shrimp, and cheese. (and I know the shrimp sounds super weird in there, but trust me, try it, it is amazing!)
That is 800 calories, and after that I'm going to wait 15 minutes and resume the rest of my dinner for yet more calories!
But if I start with 8oz of steak and some well prepared kale, well, I'm done for the night. ~700 calories total for the entire meal, rather than starting with 800 and working my way up from there!
The thing that changed my mind was realizing that skipping the bread at dinner didn't make me any less full.
[1] Such unhealthy habits are spreading world wide!
I have seen some places that pour on the sugar, I just don't order from those places twice!
In general I tend to overeat carbs and go above my daily calorie intake if I were to eat until satiety, whereas I tend to eat at or under my TDEE of meat/fat and have to sometimes force myself to reach my daily requirements.
Seasons change?
Meat is available year-round but can be dangerous to acquire and prepare safely.
Fruits/veggies are easy but seasonal food sources that store poorly, and with vast competition.
Grains and tubers are difficult to transport, spoil, and are of limited supply determined by the growing season (especially without agriculture).
Our hunt & gather ancestors followed the seasons far closer than farmers. At least on gut check, it seems fat adaptation would be strongly selected for as well as a strong taste for carbs as available
It seems like the bacteria would, in essence, be self interested and might have developed their own evolutionary mechanism to promote the supply of their food source?
In other words, if we, essentially, keep internal bacteria colonies to help break down specific types of food, those colonies may encourage consumption of their specialized food source?
We may also, symbiotically, encourage the preservation/maintenance of internal processing capability?
Because there exist more competitors for the fruits. There are more plants than there are herbivores than there are carnivores.
There are more boar eating the berries than there are of you.
It's not an accident that our palate has evolved to reward us for finding salts, fats, and sugars.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_poisoning
Meat-only diets are sustainable, but remove enough fat and you'll die.
The very rough gist is that there is historical evidence of pre agrarian humans starving to death with stomachs full of lean meat. In a nomadic lifestyle where they chase down prey protein costs too much energy to digest and convert into usable energy.
Carbs are not essential. You can live on zero total grams of carbs.
Also gluconeogenesis only converts proteins to glucose, not fat, at least not directly.
believe it or not, by your definition carbs are also essential, it’s just that the body can produce them
Protein -> carbs by gluconeogenesis
Isoleucine and phenylalanine are exclusively ketogenic and produce ketone bodies.
Leucine can be used to synthesize fatty acids in adipose tissue.
The only 2 fats that we really need are omega-3 and omega-6, but not in huge amounts, thankfully, both not from meat.
Point is, one can more readily survive without a major source of fat or carbs.
* it‘s hypothetical
* the ill effect is diarrhea
* some people have lived off a meat only diet successfully
* personal theory is the problem is not excess protein, but lack of fiber and gut biome degradation
Any mono-diet is nutritionally a bad idea, especially taken to extremes. But — one would simply not survive at all on a monodiet of pure fat or carbs.
* During periods where I am trying to lose weight or not working out much, I tend to not crave meat very much. In fact, eating certain types of meats (for example, steak) would kind of make me experience mild nausea.
* During periods where I am working out a lot (lots of running and heavy weight lifting), I have a strong desire to eat lots of meat and don't tire of it.
For me, the "charm" of meat depends on the physical requirements of what I am doing in some period of time.
https://zerocarbzen.com/2015/05/01/imagining-head-smashed-in...
Living in the arctic where it’s a lot more effort probably resulted in a more efficient use of the animal.
What kind of meat were you eating and how was it cooked? I did a month of carnivore diet and never got sick of eating rare ribeye steak, lamb ribs, or lamb legs. I think I would get sick of chicken or pot roast or well-done ground beef. That said, I never stopped missing carby meals like mac 'n cheese or cookie dough ice cream.
> I think I would get sick of chicken or pot roast or well-done ground beef
Honest question, why do people seem to love rare meat so much? I agree that tough meat doesn't taste good, but I would argue a properly cooked pot roast is about the most tender cut of meat you can find.
Having had what most "foodie" people would call a "properly cooked" just barely above rare steak, I always find it to be unsatisfying.
What am I missing?
Ribeye, lamb ribs, and lamb leg are all relatively tender. Beyond a certain point, I don't need my meat to be that tender. Frankly, ribeye is probably too tender to be optimal for health and physique -- it would be better to develop that Chad-like jaw to eat something a more tough cut ...
Rare meat is not only juicier, but too me it tastes a lot better. Rare meat tastes good, the denatured proteins of pot roast do not taste good. And while there is a tremendous amount of social conditioning and idiosyncrasies that determine people's tastes, I don't think is just me -- most people eat their steaks plain, but almost everyone I know adds sauces and fixins to their pot roast and brisket and other meats that have been cooked forever. IMO, they ruin the meat with over cooking and then add in sugars and other flavorings to make it palatable.
You put the roast in a dutch oven coated in salt and pepper the same as you would with a steak and a bit of water, then you let it cook at ~200F for 4 - 8 hours.
Usually you also slow roast some onions, carrots, potatoes, etc. along with it the last little while.
Then make a gravy from the drippings.
The gravy is good on the meat, but it's more for the vegetables. The meat is delicious in its own right.
For a bad pot roast, maybe. I've never cooked a pot roast so hot that it would reach that internal temperature, and I've never known anyone else to either.
EDIT: Looking up recipes now, apparently some recipes do call for taking pot roast to much higher temps than I cook it to. Maybe that's why fast food roasts are so bad, but also why I don't eat them.
I think people who like rare steaks just talk about it more because it's the "right" way to prepare the "best" cuts. A $200 steak is just going to be most flavorful when it's on the rarer side. But its just a signaling thing if you're talking about skirt or flank.
Same question could be asked "why does everyone all the sudden love whiskey neat so much?" - they don't, its just that the whiskey folk talk about it conspicuously.
IMO, it does not have to be a $200 cut, a $9 ribeye from Walmart cooked rare is far better than a $9 pot roast sandwich from the local fast food joint.
With at $4/lb chuck roast it's more of a trade-off. A chuck roast steak cooked rare is a little too tough for my liking. But it is far more juicy and tasteful than the same cut slow cooked and served as a pot roast
That makes a lot of sense.
Also what on earth makes a steak worth $200? I bought a 1/4 beef this fall for something like $700, and that includes all the nice steaks and roasts along with like 50 lbs of ground beef.
I think I read somewhere that mass-market beef is generally not left to hang after slaughter, is that correct?
But more generally, steaks just scale well to the high end. They keep getting better and better as cut, livestock, and preparation improves. That's not necessarily true for other foods. E.g., most pastas (while obviously delicious) will only get so good barring a virtuoso chef.
I recommend a test. Find a friend who's really good at preparing steaks. Have them cook a good cut & a regular cut from your 1/4 beef, and you cook one of each too. You'll taste the difference from cut and preparation quality.
In my experience direct from farmer beef is so superior to store bought beef that I avoid eating beef bought from a store.
I can really only imagining this working out consistently if you really developed those relationships, and for a purchase I'd make a few times a year at most, it didn't seem worth it.
I've found butchers and farmers to be generally upstanding people. I'm also in the heart of farm country. I would be a lot more leery of people targeting a more urban market.
I live alone so a quarter beef would be a real challenge to finish off. Instead, I can go to the local butcher and get the usual cuts, and the unusual cuts, soup bones, hard fat for tallow, and so on.
Where I live, at least, it's all local, beef, lamp, goat, chicken, doesn't matter.
A few pitmasters in Texas would like to have a word with you about over-generalizing....
Seriously though - a cow is a huge animal with many cuts. Some are better rare, some are sublime when cooked to a high enough heat to break down the collagen in it.
It is a bit shocking and I know a few people who just couldn't do it, we are so conditioned in the west to "rare chicken will kill you".
But, if you can manage it, very delicious. :)
Some people can't fathom others liking well done, some can't fathom rare. Pink in the middle is preferred but at red it's too watery for me, to each their own.
Most of the juice in my experience comes from cooking the meat long enough to render the fat. I've had medium-rare steak before where the fat was all still solid. Didn't seem all that great to me even though all the others raved about it.
I was gifted some leftover thin wagyu cuts recently. I cooked them through because they have so much fat they're still tender, and the brown adds flavour. It just had to render enough. I guess they were technically "well done" but perfect for me, as someone who prefers medium on typical steak.
However one point most people miss, you don't have to cut out BBQ or other meat condiments. You would be amazed how far that tablespoon actually goes and you still stay way under your carb limit. Once I discovered this the dieting got immensely easier. Same goes for types of salad dressing; I tend to the mix it yourself variety from Good Seasons.
I do not let myself slip into reasoning "just one slice of bread" is okay though. You do however need to look beyond foods you are used to. Eventually it became a game for me which made the whole process more fun
There is a growing group of people who believe in a carnivore diet, not just a keto diet. They have an active subreddit with introductory readings, a FAQ and wiki explaining their reasoning.
http://www.empiri.ca/p/eat-meat-not-too-little-mostly-fat.ht...
https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/wiki/faq#wiki_2._isn.27t_t...
https://www.reddit.com/r/zerocarb/wiki/plants
The tldr is that they believe we evolved to primarily eat meat, we get the best most bioavailable nutrients from animal sources, and that most plants have various toxins in them to discourage animals from eating them, and that even when cooked these toxins aren't completely destroyed and a lot of people experience low-level inflammation and irritation from plant sources, without realizing it.
The current consensus is that groups outside the circumpolar regions typically ate large amounts of plant matter. In many groups it was even a majority of dietary calories, alongside things like honey and probably insects. This is archaeologically well-substantiated, even taking into account formation processes and preservation biases.
What is one or two best primary sources supporting your view that our hominid ancestors of one million years ago would have been eating mostly plants?
First the date: 1 MYA was the time of H. erectus, not the AMH I was referencing. That's fine, but you'll probably be unsatisfied with the evidence from the period because it's notoriously thin. Regardless, by this time our ancestors had shifted to include megafaunal hunting and harder, diverse plant foods in their diet, so H. erectus populations were likely eating both. See [1]. For a good (slightly outdated) overview of the evidence problems, see [2]. In later periods, we can discuss things like dental microwear patterns, archaeobotany, optimal foraging models, and coprolite analysis as the evidentiary bases are so much better.
Secondly, you have to understand the difference between "plants were a large component of the diet" and "carnivores". All the former means is that meat was only about 30-70% of the diet, not upwards of 90%. The exact amount would have varied hugely by group, environment, and even the season or year. The diversity of the plants eaten would also have varied for the same reasons. For instance, some groups in the Mediterranean basin in the later Upper Pleistocene were sedentary foragers who would transition to nomadic hunter-gatherers at other times.
[1] http://doi.org/10.1126/science.1236828
[2] http://doi.org/10.1086/666700
edit: overview of the elements of "forager diets" and the various viewpoints. There's also a large body of literature on archaeobotany, especially from temperate regions.
My working hypothesis is that from a few million years ago to 100,000 years ago, our ancestors primarily ate megafauna (80% to 100% of calories) and so that is the diet we are most evolved to thrive off of. In the last 100,000 years, with the rise of agriculture and the extinction of many megafauna, there has been rapid selection pressure for humans to tolerate grains and dairy (and also breeding of tubers and grains to make them much more nutrition for humans). Toleration of plant and dairy food by modern people varies by race and by individual; but everyone can thrive by eating a lot of megafauna.
I am interested in evidence that contradicts this hypothesis -- particularly whether there is evidence that from 100kya to 3mya our ancestors were eating 30% or 50% or 70% or 95% or 100% plants. It doesn't seem like the links you gave me have such evidence. Got anything more convincing? The evidence from dental collagen and brain size energy requirements arguing for an ancestral diet of 80%+ animals seem more convincing to me.
We already know that the gut biome between two modern Americans can differ so greatly that a diet that makes one person obese will have no negative health impacts on someone else.
We know that obesity seems to be "inherited" to an extent, mediated by epigenetic effects.
And there are examples of populations that can extract nutrients from foods, such as seaweed, that the general human populace can't.
Heck a good friend of mine, if he follows exactly the same keto diet I do, felt physically sick and lethargic for 2 months before he gave up. Meanwhile I was out there doing 3 hour a day intense workouts.
Trying to say there is "one diet to rule them all", well, it doesn't work. Any given diet subreddit is going to be full of people for whom that diet works really well, and a self-reinforcing community will form. Back when I was super active on /r/keto people would come in and ask why it wasn't working for them, and after going through the regular checklist, I'd add "and maybe this just isn't for you!" because sometimes that is true!
I wish I had links to a study I saw where they worked to find an optimal diet for different people and were able to discover that different protein/fat/carb ratios worked well for different people. No one plan worked for everyone!
There is a lot we don't know about human nutrition, and while we can learn from past populations, holding up any one group as having an ideal diet that'll work for anyone, meh.
Heck I've seen people throw citations back and forth at each other for how good/bad cow milk is. Legit research, biochemical pathways explored and explained, and each side seemed to make some good points. None of which changed the fact that people people do GOMAD and put on insane muscle, while other people just get really bloated.
In more recent times, human diets have been under rapid selection pressure, with most human groups being able to tolerate grains, and some being able to thrive off of milk, and other human groups . These populations that underwent selection for certain diets then get mixed around a lot with various migrations, conquests, and intermarriage, and so it is a bit of crapshoot what kind of diet any given modern caucasian American can tolerate. Pretty much any American can thrive on a diet that is very heavy in cow meat, but what kind of dairy or plants can be tolerated is more random.
Heck a good friend of mine, if he follows exactly the same keto diet I do, felt physically sick and lethargic for 2 months before he gave up. Meanwhile I was out there doing 3 hour a day intense workouts.
Out of curiosity, what are the rough outlines of this diet that did not work for your friend?
Typical keto, equal portions by weight of protein and fat, with green leafy veggies on the side.
He is good at research and did his homework, just... didn't work out for him.
I didn't know there was a typical keto diet. Some people do carnivore, while some people go heavy on vegetable oils and protein powders. Was he eating ribeye steaks? Or chicken breasts and olive oil? Or tofu and almond butter?
I personally find Jordan Peterson's content pretty interesting. His daughter on the other hand, she seems pretty scammy. Have a hard time taking that diet seriously. But I guess if it makes people happy, good for them.
I was surprised to learn when my kids were born that hospital food is just about as greasy and generally unhealthy as any fast food you're likely to come across.
I got tired of avocados first. After several years, I still can't stand them! But keto is a lot more than meat, it is nuts and berries, dairy[1], and lots of green leafy vegetables.
The # of things I can't eat on keto comes down to bread, potatoes, rice, and super sugary fruits, but it isn't like the 170 grams of sugar (!!!!) in 1/2 a watermelon was ever good for me.
This is the crux of it. You can have a very varied, and very flavorful experience on keto (or its variations).
> I got tired of avocados first.
This is where we have to part ways. I can see avocados, alone, getting old quickly. But I could eat guacamole every day for the rest of my life and never tire of it.
I did a low-carb diet once for three months and lost 10kg.
Most of it because I just couldn't see eggs, cheese, and meat anymore.
The other thing people don't always realize is that the longer you've been on a low carb diet, the more carbs you can eat and stay ketosis.
After 6 months or so, even an entire medium sized apple (19g of sugar) isn't likely to be a problem.
This is even more true for people who work out, heck 40g of sugar from fruit followed by 1 hour of high intensity workout, probably not an issue.
Starting out strict is needed to get on the keto train, but, but a low sugar ice cream with 10g a serving twice a week isn't going to kick most people out of Ketosis if they've been there for awhile.
You only need to take a look at the difference between the feces of carnivore and herbivores. Cow dung or rabbit pellets really aren't all that bad. Wolf or otter feces, as two examples, is pretty vile stuff.
Not something I've really been adventurous enough to try though.
German Liver Sausage? That is one of the most delicious things on earth!
How's this for a "recipe": Beef trim (50%), beef liver (20%), beef heart (15%), and beef kidney (15%).
Take a nice piece of rye bread (best is a real sourdough rye bread), spread the Leberwurst very thick, top off with a cornichon and/or pickled mini onion. Heavenly.
At a certain point, I'm sure being sick of meat (especially from fairly large and omnipresent megafauna), the services of a companion dog/wolf would have been worth the waste.
Also many northern hunter gatherers eat the contents of the stomach of their kills as a way to get carbohydrates, trace nutrients and vitamins, etc. Between that and a source for furs, leathers, bones (for tool/structure making), one might make more kills than necessary and have excess meat.