Paleo Diet and Paleolithic Diet Questions & Answers

Question

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Are there any examples of healthy cultures who eat a lot of carbohydrate with a low fiber intake, say 400 grams of carbs and only 20-30 grams of fiber or a culture who eats a high flesh fat diet, non-dairy based?

I know the Chinese eat a fair amount of carb from white rice so their fiber intake must be somewhat low. However, I don't how healthy they really are. High fat cultures such as the French, Swedish or the Masai seem to eat a lot of fat from dairy, but not from animal flesh, such as tallow and lard. Dairy has its problems but it is much more nutrient dense than tallow and lard, which are essentially empty calories.

I guess what I am trying to determine is whether a high carb diet could be healthy despite being moderate in fiber and if a high fat intake from animal flesh eaten anywhere in the world besides the paleosphere.

flag	asked Aug 13 at 0:11 ROB 3,362●8●30

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I do not believe that our ancestors ate a high fat diet. IF you watch videos of animals they're hunting, the animals are incredibly lean, and they roast it over an open fire, which lets the grease drip off. Nutrients are more important than fat. – foreveryoung Aug 13 at 0:17

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My beliefs too. Which is why I am questioning the use of tallow and lard. Seems highly unnatural. – ROB Aug 13 at 0:24

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Not saying I agree or disagree, but just because our ancestors did or did not do something doesn't mean we should follow suit. Sorry, had to play devil's advocate. – Potato Avenger Aug 13 at 0:27

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Paleo man ate every part of the animal, thus he also ate the fattier parts of the animal as well (such as the kidneys, liver, and maybe even the intestines from time to time.) They didn't have the luxury of throwing away parts of the animal. Considering fat is more often used as a structural macro than anything else, I don't think there's any harm in consuming a high fat diet. Fact of the matter is, most butchers nowaday trim the fat off their animals because it's commonplace for people to be grossed out by the "extra" fat. I'd make the argument that MOST meat nowadays is lean. – BoneBrothFast Aug 13 at 2:01

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@BBF- if you watch videos online of modern day HGs, they feed the intestines to the dogs, and they roast the meat over an open fire, which doesn't exactly do a good job of rendering fat. The animals they're catching are also quite lean by todays standard to begin with, as being a fat animal is not very conducive to survival in the wild. – foreveryoung Aug 13 at 3:18

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AgingHippie · Answer 1 · 2012-08-13 02:38:49Z UTC

http://okicent.org/docs/anyas_cr_diet_2007_1114_434s.pdf

http://fanaticcook.blogspot.com/2010/07/traditional-okinawan-diet-sweet.html

1785 calories/day - 85% carb, 9% protein, 6% fat with 23 grams of fiber per day

Average life span and maximum life span in the Okinawan, Japanese, and U.S. populations was 83.8 and 104.9 years, 82.3 and 101.1 years, and 78.9 and 101.3 years, respectively.

The older cohort of Okinawans (aged 65-plus) is remarkable in many ways. Of particular interest is that they possess among the highest functional capacity and the longest survival in Japan, the country with world’s longest-lived population. Life expectancy at birth for the year 2000 was 86.0 years for Okinawan women and 77.6 years for Okinawan men, respectively. Life expectancy for the septuagenarian cohort (life expectancy at age 65) is the highest in Japan, and possibly the world, at 24.1 years for females and 18.5 years for males, respectively.40 This compares to 22.5 years and 17.6 years for the same birth cohort in mainland Japan and 19.3 years and 16.2 years for the corresponding U.S. birth cohort of females and males, respectively.41

Eugene K · Answer 2 · 2012-08-13 03:00:02Z UTC

High fat, zero carb is eaten traditionally by inuits. High carb is eaten by kitavans and okinawans.

They are very healthy, but once they introduce refined carbs, vegetable oils and gluten, they start to have problems.

Kitavans and okinawans are not hunter gatherers though so it is questionable if such lifestyle was available during paleo.

Answering your question - high carb can be healthy for healthy physically active people (insulin sensitive).

Whether high carb is paleo or not is an open question. I think that at some points people had access to high carb food sources even high up north (berry or honey season)

On the other hand I can't eat too much animal fat as it's very filling. At the same time I can overeat carbs constantly, probably because my ancestors didn't have access to dangerous amounts of carbs for long periods of time, so no protective mechanism evolved.

Diane · Answer 3 · 2012-08-14 13:04:21Z UTC

I saw a video online of hunter gatherer bushmen doing a persistence hunt. The hunters ate the fatty bone marrow and took the meat back for the women and children. Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest traded in a grease made from a small fish called oolichan. This grease was important to their health. Other tribes rendered the fat from mammals and traded it as pemmican. The Inuit eat whale blubber and other mammal fat. I met an Inuit man and he said it was very tasty. More recent modern cultures the world over ate all parts of the animal. It was only with the advent of industrial culture that we lost our knowledge of how to prepare and eat the brains, organs and other odd bits, but you can still find pockets in your ethnic communities where you can order brains and other fatty organs. It was only around the 60s-80s that our own modern culture turned away from fat. And look where it has gotten us.

blogblog · Answer 4 · 2012-08-28 06:56:40Z UTC

The Okinawans and Kitivans are farmers not HGs.

The Japanese longevity claims are totally worthless. Deaths are not recorded in a central database and vast numbers of pensions are paid to the families of people who are almost certainly dead.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/world/asia/15japan.html

Low Fiber High Carb vs High Meat Fat

4 Answers