WOW! Just Wow. Until now, I've read Paul's stuff with friendly interest but he really blew me away today--major score.

Now, I know one of my weaknesses is that I'm a non-critical person and I don't have an eagle eye/ear when enjoying presentations. But still, I found this very clear and well organized and the chain of logic was SO clear for each slide.

He's the first person to seriously make me pause and reconsider my passionate advocacy of fruit. Will I give it up completely? No. Will I keep his overall recommendations in mind when shopping and fixing meals? YES.

If I'd paid a typical fee to attend the Summit as a conference, I would feel I got my money today. And that's the best compliment I can think of (besides the fruit thing, of course.)

There's always the chance I was just hearing the parts that said what I wanted to hear (yes, I do that) but so far I don't think so. I will read other reactions carefully to learn what I misconstrued or overlooked.

I loved his talk. He's one of the more well-reasoned voices out there in the ancestral nutrition blogosphere...

I really liked this talk. It touches on Food Reward which is cool. Well presented. Highly recommended. It also covers some of the book The Perfect Health Diet.

What I really liked in this presentation was Paul's discussion of his and Shou-Ching's rationale related to the macronutrient composition of breast milk as one of the lines of evidence for the PHD. It may have just been poor reading comprehension on my part, but I don't think they explained it as well in the book.

So, for everyone, like me who said "babies aren't like adults" as far as extrapolating an appropriate diet, check this out. What Paul presents is still conjecture, but it's reasoned conjecture related to the size of the brain relative to the body and the brain's need for glucose.

I'm glad you fine folks talked me into listening!

I took notes and random thoughts, so I will just paste them. This part was specifically his defense of starches (20%) based on good data from real Paleo sites and the % carbs in mothers milk, adjusted for an adults requirements. I know this has low carb folks up in arms about "Safe starches" so this is what I'm listening for...

Jaminet makes lots of very well thought out points of interest to people interested in how to eat better. It's well worth listening too because the stuff you agree with far outweighs the stuff you don't.

I don't buy the breast milk hypothesis. (We should live on 20% carbs because babies have a certain percent from breast milk, adjusted to adult requirements)

I don't think Jaminet mentioned the possibility that maybe an infants digestive system is not developed enough (since they haven't had a steak yet), and they need the carbs from mothers milk initially. Natural development of the digestive system eventually takes place and 20% from food is not such a fixed requirement.

He's not taking into account that adults have other ways to make glucose besides following a food percent rule. Nature provides.

He makes a good case for evolutionary and physical evidence for Paleo folks eating 20% starches, in terms of total calories. Also, good point that humans did not evolve by getting their protein from plants. Take that, vegans.

Low carbers are not buying his safe starches thing. They are trying to change their weight. Jaminet goes through his whole defense of the optimal human diet without mentioning the modern problem of weight loss for people that ate crap for years and want to fix it.

Jaminet is talking about the optimal human diet for the optimal human. Dieters have a different set of things to focus on.

I liked it. As one of the few who has not actually read his book...(though have been through their site extensively), I thought he presented a very logical argument for their recommendations.

One thing that stuck out to me was the mention of extended fasts or reduced food intake...although this was really to show how our body mobilizes energy and in what forms/ratios during these times, makes you consider the ramifications of including extended fasts in your regimen for optimal health.

I thought it was a brilliant interview. As it always is with Jaminet. I love how calm and rational he comes across, and his logic and reason is some of the best in the paleo sphere imho. Great questions asked from Sean with clear and concise answers given. I listen to most of the interviews Paul takes part in and am always blown away by his clear thinking and humbleness. Give me thoughtful speakers over manic megalomaniacs any day.

This was such a great intro to his work, and I really enjoyed listening to it, even though I disagree with others here on the breast milk conclusion. One thing that really perplexed me is, gee, how many PhD's does it take in the house to figure out if you have scurvy you should get more C? I would never defend or try such a diet just because someone wrote about it on the internet. I don't see how that would ever lead to adding a gob of C-less rice to your diet. Perhaps the journey to that recommendation was longer than what was covered in this presentation.

It was an excellent and enlightening interview as always. I've always enjoyed interviews with him on other blogs, there were always bits of deep info that I picked up.

I absolutely need to get my hands on his book. :)

The only minor "bug" with his talk was when he mentioned that all we have on our ancestors is a bunch of bones, teeth, and the nitrogen/carbon ratios there, as well as bones of animals that were clearly hunted by them. He forgot that we did find coprolites, so we do know more about their diets from there.

I, myself, can't make use of the higher carb levels that he recommends, as anytime that I do, even though they're from safe starches, I wind up stalling fat loss and indeed gain more fat. Maybe I'm broken in some way still, but certainly, I'm too sensitive to insulin, and it does have an effect on fat levels. I did see something recently about how BPA tends to make insulin far more effective, thus causing obesity, perhaps I've had too much exposure to it. Or perhaps it's genetic. (Is there any way to remove BPA that's already floating around in there?)

Well, I basically eat the PHD recommended macros (never read the book--got there via Mark Sisson, plus some trial & error), but he didn't convince me about "safe starches."

Plenty of honey & fruit eaten by modern H/G tribes and this could easily have been the case during our evolution. I think it's more likely to be tubers and fruit. We are essentially "opportunivores", IMO.

Small complaint: His delivery leaves a bit to be desired for me. Just not very flowing, too many pauses...ums...etc. I found it tiresome to listen and preferred reading his slides.

I'm a complete newbie to Paul's work, though I've gotten the gist of it from the Paleosphere. There's just so much to read, you know? I hadn't gotten around to PHD yet.

This was a great, succinct intro to everything, and I'm actually glad now that I waited for the presentation rather than reading the book. Big time saver.

I found it easy to follow, though I agree with Dragonfly that at times, I found myself reading the slides more than listening. There were a few audio glitches, so maybe that contributed too.

I'm not sure about a few things. I think the breastmilk hypothesis is an interesting way to go about this, but I'm not sure how that holds up. I was also confused when he talked about the body's composition being X% fat, carbs, and protein when he had just mentioned that what we eat gets manipulated by our bodies during digestion. So I'm not sure that using our body's make-up is a great way to determine what we should be eating in which ratios. (But maybe I'm getting something mixed up there? Feel free to set me straight. Unleash the hounds!)

I loved his advice to eat according to what your body wants. We all know that this advice doesn't work when your metabolism is hijacked by processed foods, but when eating real foods, you really can be in sync with it. It's been my guiding principle for over a year and it's a beautiful, liberating experience for sure.

One of the things that stood out to me was his comment that creating glucose in the liver is hard on it, so eat some so it doesn't have to. Does his book or website have any references to this? Does anyone know of other research that supports that statement? That's the first time I'd heard that argument in favor of starches.

"creating glucose in the liver is hard on it" - not sure what that even means, that's one of the things it's there for.

Let's face it, blood glucose has to be maintained 24/7 or we collapse in a hypoglycaemic coma. We avoid that by having a liver (and kidney) that makes glucose in the post-absorptive state.

http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/24/2/382.full covers renal gluconeogenesis and touches on the liver too.