One thing about walking early in the AM, you get to thinking.....
After some pointed exchanges with the paleo crowd, and past exchanges with vegans, I've come to the dumb conclusion that we're all mammals. Our original food is milk, and that's what we digest best. Every other food is a food of convenience which we can digest, but which is nutritionally unbalanced (ie every food is a junk food in its own way). What we do best on is a mixture of simple carbohydrates, casein-like protein and oleic/palmitic type fat; delivered at about 12% solids (ie with LOTS of water). Here's the composition via USDA:
http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/foodcomp/cgi-bin /list_nut_edit.pl
So with this as a basis, here's what I project as a human milk equivalent diet:
For 2000 calories per day dry basis weights:
290g carbs (1160 calories)
40g protein (160 calories)
73g fat (660 calories)
taken with at least 3L of water.
I don't see this as prescriptive, only as a model. But it's a fairly good mammalian model. We are meant as a species to eat lots of carbs, a fair amount of fat, and a little bit of protein.
.. it's what we digest best AS INFANTS. Not adults. Mammals eat other things too after a few short weeks, because we and they grow teeth and sometimes claws.
I doubt apples, vegetables, grains and roots are 'junk foods'
You should write a book, I bet you'd make a million dollars!
I don't think the optimum intake balance of infants is necessarily anything like an optimum intake balance for adults. They have different needs. They've got to grow and develop, for example, and we don't.
Going by your posted numbers I get a 58/33/8 carb/fat/protein ratio. If you look at some common dietary guidelines (I've alway recommend the Mayo Clinic's) that's okay on carbs, a bit high but still in range on fat, and a bit low and out of range on protein.
And what optimal ranges would be for toddlers or grade-schoolers or teenagers could be different yet again.
And what about those of us who are lactose intolerant? Humans are the only species (that I know of) that drinks the milk of another species in adulthood. Our mother's milk is good for us and is the perfect blend of nutrition, but nutrition needs change as we grow, and that is why humans, like all other mammals, are weaned off of milk in early childhood.
I've never seen a cat turn down a saucer of milk but I've never known of a cat that could milk a cow.
Any way, as already pointed out, your model is low in protein.
lol buggy....way to interject some humour! love the BNL!
i can't even comment on this, there is just way too many problems!!!
Kelly took the words right out of my mouth! Milk isn't natural past the toddler stage. I'm lactose intolerant. My body tells me not to ingest milk and milk products. I think that says something about our natural state.
I would love to have one product that I could only eat (think, like, dog food) where there's no guess work. He gets a cup a day and that's that. Well, he also gets my egg yolks but that's a completely different matter. :D
It's an interesting thought though!
Original Post by orangecls:
Kelly took the words right out of my mouth! Milk isn't natural past the toddler stage. I'm lactose intolerant. My body tells me not to ingest milk and milk products. I think that says something about our natural state.
No, it says something about your natural state.
My body can process lactose with no adverse side effects. There's nothing unnatural about drinking milk as an adult, it just doesn't work for everyone. Some people are allergic to peanuts - should we all stop eating them?
like other people have said, milk from our mothers is what we needed as infants but now we drink over pasteurized cows milk, which makes digesting it much more difficult. i personally don't have a problem digesting milk, but I know a lot of people that cannot tolerate milk/lactose
Original Post by orangecls:
I would love to have one product that I could only eat (think, like, dog food) where there's no guess work. He gets a cup a day and that's that. Well, he also gets my egg yolks but that's a completely different matter. :D
This was my point. No, milk is not the ideal product past the toddler stage (too much fat, not enough protein, and lots of people lose the ability to digest the lactose), but what food is? There are a million and one healthy diets, all of which are variations off of milk's components. Lots of carbs, some fat, and a moderate amount of protein. Plenty of latitude in the % of each and the diet's still healthy.
I should write a book? Books started the problem. Stupid diet books where the author comes up with an idea, becomes infatuated with it, and bingo! We're supposed to eat like cave persons? Or Dr. Adkins? Or Rachelle Ray? Hit yourself with a stick and come to your Common Sense.
I like the million dollars idea though. And the song.
Original Post by thhq:
Original Post by orangecls:
I would love to have one product that I could only eat (think, like, dog food) where there's no guess work. He gets a cup a day and that's that. Well, he also gets my egg yolks but that's a completely different matter. :D
This was my point. No, milk is not the ideal product past the toddler stage (too much fat, not enough protein, and lots of people lose the ability to digest the lactose), but what food is? There are a million and one healthy diets, all of which are variations off of milk's components. Lots of carbs, some fat, and a moderate amount of protein.
Yeah, but if you stretch it, that's true of just about any food: percent of fat/carbs/protein. Those diets aren't based on the % milk makes up, they just happen to be that way, and it depends on the milk.
I drink skim, if I must, which is 1% fat. I wouldn't survive on a diet that was 1% (or even 4% fat). I don't think advocating a diet where fat only makes up 4% of the total calories is a remotely good idea.
And again, you're basing off some weird idea that milk is ideal, when it isn't after 2 years of age.
PLENTY of foods are ideal, like fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts and grains. There's a reason we eat a wide variety of foods.
Original Post by amethystgirl:
Original Post by orangecls:
Kelly took the words right out of my mouth! Milk isn't natural past the toddler stage. I'm lactose intolerant. My body tells me not to ingest milk and milk products. I think that says something about our natural state.
No, it says something about your natural state.
My body can process lactose with no adverse side effects. There's nothing unnatural about drinking milk as an adult, it just doesn't work for everyone. Some people are allergic to peanuts - should we all stop eating them?
This brings up an interesting point. Is the lactose intolerance that most humans (all humans before the genetic change, that only 10% of us have) get caused because A) it was beneficial to leave the mother and start eating food on our own, or B) or because drinking just milk becomes bad nutritionally at that age and beyond.
If A is the reason, drinking milk (or some equivalent) might be very good for the "tolerant people" as adults. If B is the reason, they should be consuming something very different than milk.
Even if A is the reason that most people become lactose intolerant, modern ultra-pasteurized cows milk is a very different food than human mothers milk and should be considered as a separate entity on its own right.
OGR - Or.... drinking cow's milk isn't particularly related to nursing as an infant. Cow's milk is a product of animals. We (humans over the course of time, of course excluding veg*ns) eat lots of products of animals - their muscle and fat tissue, the marrow from their bones, their organs, and in the case of chickens and fish, their eggs. Why not their milk - it's a great way to get food from the animal without killing it.
I don't see much use in trying to connect the food and drink that we consume as adults to what we consume as infants. I don't think we need to continue consuming the same things, nor do I think we should avoid anything that's similar to baby food (I know a lot of people aren't planning on giving up applesauce).
As for the modern ultra-pasteurized (and grain-fed) cows milk... well, it's very different from the cow's milk that people used to drink too, as is most of the mass-produced meat that's available to most of us. And if that seems like a problem, then it might be worth it to find some raw milk from grass-fed cows (although I think that raw milk might not be legal in all states), as well as grass-fed meat.
Original Post by amethystgirl:
As for the modern ultra-pasteurized (and grain-fed) cows milk... well, it's very different from the cow's milk that people used to drink too, as is most of the mass-produced meat that's available to most of us. And if that seems like a problem, then it might be worth it to find some raw milk from grass-fed cows (although I think that raw milk might not be legal in all states), as well as grass-fed meat.
There's legal ways around the legalities if anyone's interested in raw milk. Here in Michigan we're a big dairy state with a big dairy lobby to go with it, and it's illegal to sell raw milk. You can only get it by owning your own cow.
A work-around used here is to be a paying member of a co-op or "cow share" that DOES own the cows, and in return you get a share of the milk or cheese in proportion to your share of ownership. And you never have to even look at a cow let alone milk one, the co-op pays participating dairy farmers to do all that. All perfectly legal.
"And again, you're basing off some weird idea that milk is ideal, when it isn't after 2 years of age."
fluffy, I'm not making this prescriptive. Milk is only a model, and since it's the only food we've ever had that was designed for us to eat it gives us some useful clues about what to eat as adults. Milk is only the broad outline.
Books, books, books......Cervantes, in describing Don Quixote, says that he read so many romances that they shriveled his brain. Tilting at windmills was the result. Here on these boards I see a lot of that. Some people convince themselves that vegetables are the answer, others that meat is the answer. Battle lines are drawn and familiar insults are exchanged:
"Milk is for baby cows" from the vegetable castle.
"Grains have no nutritional value" from the meat castle.
Both of these statements are romantic notions. Think about milk as a model and common sense comes in to play against both. To the vegetable position: milk is a completely animal product which contains no fiber, and is mostly simple carbohydrates. To the meat position: milk is not meat, contains 50%+ carbohydrates, and only a modest amount of protein.
After the age of two we're left to our senses and appetites to select new foods that suit us. We're all guided by our experience with milk. There's no perfect "People Chow" ready for us on the shelf.
Original Post by thhq:
"And again, you're basing off some weird idea that milk is ideal, when it isn't after 2 years of age."
fluffy, I'm not making this prescriptive. Milk is only a model, and since it's the only food we've ever had that was designed for us to eat
This statement is absolutely absurd.
How was milk designed for us to eat? human milk is produced by our mothers, but is VASTLY different from cow milk. It is the only thing we can consume, outside of formula, because that's all that infants can handle. It has nothing to do with what we consume as adults. Evolution has figured out what our bodies need to produce to nourish our young.
No meat eater has ever said 'grains have no nutritional value'
cow milk is, in fact, for baby cows. That we can turn it into something else that we can consume doesn't mean it doesn't have other uses.
Again, I'm not sure where you're getting your %'s from, but 160 calories worth of protein out of 2000 calories is simply not enough protein.
You do realize that Lions are mammals as well, and eat meat more or less exclusively, right? Pandas are also mammals and eat nothing but bamboo.
fluffy, quit tilting at windmills! We both recognize that cow milk is useful as a human food, so why throw the baby cow back at me?
It was only last week that I was told that grains had no nutritional value. It went beyond that: grains are toxic. You need to study the paleo diet romances.
Finally, lions and pandas have their exclusive chow and I'm glad for them. We don't. As mammals we all started out on the same (or similar) milk feed, but our paths diverged at weaning. I could argue that we would not be healthy on either a panda or lion diet, but what would be the point? I would only cross swords with someone here who believes that those ARE good diets for us.
I could see myself on a raccoon diet, though....minus the carrion eating....
