The Illusion of Nutrient-Dense Food

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.“ - Hippocrates

In my wayward vegetarian days, before finding Weston A. Price and eventually Paleo, I ate my fair share of faux food:  soy ground beef crumbles, egg substitutes made from tofu, heart-healthy margarine, and my favorite, seitan (pure wheat gluten).  For those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, check out this 30 second “public service announcement” from Ron Swanson of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

SmackDown: Raw Vegan versus Paleo

photo credit: realhealthdebate.com

Last week Harley Johnson (a.k.a. Durianrider) champion of the “low fat, raw, vegan” experiment attempted to debate Richard Nikoley (blogger at Free the Animal).  With facts and reasoning on his side, Richard clearly articulated the benefits of eating a Paleo diet based on nutrient dense animal products. 

At one point in the debate, Richard challenged the listeners to compare the nutritional value of a small four ounce serving of beef liver to a “healthy” vegan alternative.  One listener (via 30 Bananas a Day) suggested that his meal of 5 pounds of fruit (mangos and strawberries) was nutritionally equivalent to the liver.  Five pounds of fruit (at one meal) – You must be joking (211 grams of sugary carbohydrates)! 

Note:  Not everyone loves to eat liver; however almost any cut of pasture-raised meat will show a vastly superior nutritional profile to the vegan alternative.

My Take

My worldview is strongly shaped by a belief that humans are a product of millions of years of evolution and adaptation.  While our large brains have enabled us to achieve great things (from a human point of view), we too often think that evolutionary rules do not apply to us, that we are special and different from the other creatures on the planet.

A case in point is the belief that humans are best suited to a vegan diet, one devoid of ANY animal products.  This belief is based on a moral argument that says keeping and/or killing animals for human needs and nutrition is wrong and unnecessary.  While I can appreciate the sentiment, it totally ignores how our species has eaten (AND ADAPTED) for thousands of generations. 

Let me be clear – I think that vegetarians, partaking of nutrient dense animal products such as eggs, milk, and cheese, can live in a healthy fashion.  Vegans on the other hand are choosing to ignore evolution and experiment with an unproven diet.  I do not think their experiment will end well.

Things I have Been Reading

In preparing posts for my blog, I spend a good amount of time reading and researching around the internet.  Rather than write about everything I read, I plan to occasionally provide links to posts that catch my eye.  Below are a few from the past week that you may find interesting:

1. I highly recommend Dr. Kurt Harris’s blog covering all aspects of paleo nutrition.  Here is an overview post for Getting Started. 
2. Dan Matesz at Primal Wisdom has a great post about Primal Diet on a Shoestring: a Nutritionally Complete, Inexpensive, Low Carbohydrate Meal Plan.
3. Mark Sisson, author of The Primal BluePrint, has a post about how more-and-more people are using mail-order blood tests.  Take a look at Doctors as Middlemen?
4. For those of you that want to get a better understanding of the science of obesity, check out How Does a Cell Avoid Obesity? at Perfect Health Diet.
5. Finally, I found Ned Kock’s post on Compensatory Adaptationto be very enlightening.