I’m yet another former vegetarian (macrobiotic, at that!) whose health deteriorated under that regime and was saved by discovering good fats, especially animal fats, which helped me to get off sugar. I don’t follow a strict low-carb plan but I avoid grains and am cutting way back on legumes, and eat plenty of green, red, yellow, purple plants, and animals of various colors. I eat as much butter as possible, and cook with a combo of coconut oil and ghee. My plan is WAPF, influenced by low carb/primal/paleo. I’m just N=1 but it works for me!

Well, I’m not one of them. Now, let me qualify this statement. I don’t mean to say that all human beings should eat the exact same foods. That wouldn’t be possible or sustainable; we all live in different areas of the world and it’s really best if we eat what’s locally available to us. Fuels get more and more expensive for shipping; wars happen and supply lines are blocked; animals and crops fare better in some climates than in others; so on and so forth. So, we’re always going to have different diets. That’s fine. What I’m talking about when I say human beings do not naturally possess radically differing dietary requirements is that we do not radically differ in our MACRONUTRIENT requirements.

Veganism is not a species-appropriate diet for ANY human being; ovo-lacto vegetarianism may best be a response to poverty that does not allow its sufferers to afford any more protein and animal fat than may be found in dairy and eggs. There are no vegan indigenous groups. There are carnivorous ones, and several degrees of omnivorous. They had to figure out what worked for them early on in their development and stick with it if they wanted to be healthy and survive long enough to have kids. Poor nutrition equals infertility, early childhood death and poor physical development–so they couldn’t play around. They didn’t have vitamin pills. So maybe we had better start paying attention to what they were doing.

It amuses the hell out of me that all these “experts” decide what’s best for us by observing what civilized cultures eat. Civilized cultures (by which I mean domesticated, as opposed to wild/tribal, human beings) are bound more by abstract concept than by empirical knowledge. It’s funny that civilization has mocked and pitied indigenous peoples for so long for being “superstitious,” but there’s a difference between making up stories to explain things you don’t understand, and re-arranging how you live and eat because some elitist in an ivory tower someplace was meditating and came up with a dumb idea that everyone followed so they could look as smart as they thought he was. This has been a problem for a long, long time–most of human history, in fact. It is not solely a problem of modern academia.

Not that the “experts” who look at indigenous people always get the right answers. I am still a bit bemused at Cordain’s assertion, for example, that “paleo” people ate low-fat diets. North American Indians could tell you something about that one–get too much protein without accompanying fat, and you get rabbit starvation. Once again someone favored an elitist abstraction over the empirical evidence.

Oh well. *Some* of us are starting to pay attention.

A commenter: if you have any chance in hell of changing the minds of people who have publicly bought into a certain dogma for most of their lives you’ll need to be even MORE civilised and show a lot of kindness and respect at all times. Put yourself in Campbell’s position. Can you imagine the amount of pride he would have to swallow to even begin to accept your point of view as a valid hypothesis?

If some yahoo values his pride more than he values other people’s health outcomes then personally, I don’t know about Jimmy, but I couldn’t care less whether I ever get through to him.

At a certain point you have to accept you will not “convert” everyone. Some people will never listen, will never look at the evidence (cherry-picking constitutes not looking at the evidence), and will eat wrong and will die badly. You know, I’m all for getting the information out there and battling the vested interests opposing it… but I can’t hold someone’s hand and make them see reason.

When my little girl was first getting acquainted with playground equipment, we “spotted” her to make sure she wouldn’t fall when she was going up ladders and such. If the equipment seemed tricky she would be hesitant. At first she would ask me for help. I told her, “Look, all I can do is spot you and make sure you don’t fall. I am right here and I’ll catch you. But I can’t move your legs for you and make you climb. You have to do that yourself.” A few times of that and it sank in and now she keeps up with kids twice her age. (She’s five.) I no longer have to spot her and she’s way more active and daring than I was at her age.

The ones who don’t let it sink in will just fall on their heads, I guess. I hate to see that happen, but it’s not like the information isn’t there. Once the information’s there, it’s up to the folks who read it to act on it. And this is coming from a so-called “liberal” so make of it what you will.

Soon my scathing 10 000 word report will be finished. Believe me, I love wildlife. But wildlife conservation groups and ‘animal rights’ groups seem to be two separate breeds. The Compassionate Mafia hates the human animal. I trust Dr. Campbell and his cronies never use anesthesia, insulin, painkillers, or anything else that may make them a hypocrite, considering all of these were given to us as gifts from our animal friends.

I’d be interested in reading this.