Great post!

@ Kris -

You make a valid point that a natural whole-foods vegetarian diet including eggs and cultured milk products can be very healthy. I would personally add some wild caught fish to that for the essential oils. If being vegetarian works for you, great! However, I feel better with very fatty meat in my diet.

As far as meat - chicken, pork, and beef - being addictive, I don't agree. Consider plain ground beef. It's not the most appetizing thing all by itself. But add garlic, onions, tomatoes, and spices to it, and it becomes delicious meat loaf. I certainly enjoy meat loaf more than plain ground beef, but it doesn't induce cravings for me.

The most difficult things for me to give up are processed carbohydrates. I absolutely love cakes, brownies, and cookies. I used to make my own Nestle Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. They were heavenly. I used to make my own pizza crust for vegan pizza back in the day. I also enjoyed homemade sourdough pancakes with syrup and fruit. All that sugar and wheat flour did no favors for my health, of course. By contrast, eating meat, while satisfying, seems a bit bland. Eating manufactured junk food is so much more addicting than eating Paleo/Primal, and the processed food industry knows it.

Kris, I must also disagree that fiber is necessary. I eat very little fiber and don't get constipated. I have regular, easy bowel movements. I won't speak for anyone else's experience, but for me it is a fact that meat is not the cause of constipation. I would suggest that those who get constipated should consume more oils and fats. Removing grains from my diet has helped me overcome an irritable bowel. I would like to eat more vegetables, but on my current budget I have to shop for the highest calorie-per-dollar foods I can find.

@ Kris -

Your concern with cleanliness, purity, and aesthetics speaks more about your social position, economic status, and religious heritage than any universal human qualities I am aware of.

You compare a butcher shop to a fruit and vegetable market. Why not go instead to a farmer's market where all kinds of whole food are sold: meats, eggs, milk, honey, fruits, vegetables, etc?

@ Florin -

I won't argue with you. I skimmed your post. You have nothing new to add to this discussion. FYI, I've read vegan books and watched vegan documentaries such as (in no particular order):

Diet for a New America by John Robbins,
The China Study by T. Colin Campbell,
The 80/10/10 Diet by Doug Graham,
One of the raw food books by Victoria Boutenko,
The RAVE diet documentaries (that you mentioned) by Mike Anderson,
Forks Over Knives,
Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead,
Earthlings,
Breakthrough, a documentary about a raw vegan family,
and probably some others that don't come to mind at the moment...

Tell me something new, Florin, because I'm still not convinced. You seem to be operating under the assumption that none of us knows what you write about. How can you convince us unless you know what we know?

I've also read and watched the following (in no particular order):

The Gnoll Credo by J. Stanton,
Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes,
Why We Get Fat And What To Do About It by Gary Taubes,
Pure, White, and Deadly a book about sugar by John Yudkin,
Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon,
Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price,
The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith,
Wheat Belly by William Davis,
Fat Head, a documentary by Tom Naughton,
and many Paleo/Primal/HFLC blogs and pod casts, but you get the idea...

Florin, unless and until you have actually read the above books (summary reviews of them written by vegans don't count), I'll just ignore you.

OK, Florin, just this one point: You make a distinction between junk food vegans and whole food vegans. I'm glad your mom beat cancer, but would she have beaten it eating vegan junk food? No. Remember what the letters for the RAVE diet stand for? In addition to its exclusion of animal foods, the RAVE diet allows no refined sugars, no refined grain products, and no added vegetable oils (and no exceptions). Essyelstyn placed similar restrictions on his heart patients, allowing no processed carbohydrates, for example, among other things. So, was it the meat or something else? I don't doubt good results, but I seriously question the lack of scientific method. If you need a refresher on what good science actually is you could do worse than check out Science for Smart People on You Tube.

So, from my perspective, Florin, you're blaming the wrong foods for chronic disease. You're all upset about people eating meat while the multi-billion dollar processed food industry gets a free pass from people like you. Or should I say, you know that Coca Cola and Little Debbies are unhealthy, but you instead prefer to troll a Paleo oriented blog that encourages supporting local farmers selling real food. (Not to mention hunting and gathering your own if you are able to do so. There's no profit in that for ADM and Monsanto either!)

I am wondering why the olive oil is not mentioned here as a part of healthy diet? Next, what is better to use, normal butter or ghee? I would think that for cooking, particularly frying, ghee should be better as it reacts less to the heat?

The other thing I am wondering regarding the paelo diet is why nuts and seeds are not encouraged? I agree that our system is not used to grains, but we have been eating nuts and some tasty seeds that do not require cooking since the beginning, well since we have learnt to crash the nut shells. So our system is very well adjusted to nuts. I love nuts and it pains to restrict them. They are just delicious.

J.S.

The musus plag is a simple fact. I don't know who had this 40kg of mucus, and I don't really care. I have seen these things with my own eyes and this stands for more than internet links. The link you gave is posted by someone who does not have direct knowledge of colonics practice, and sounds like an idiot. If you want to clarfy this matter, you may for instance research Bernard Jenson, who did colon menagement of 300.000 patience. (i hope this time i got the number right). In one case he got from a person 3 gallons of putrified matter. I accuse you of being prejudiced against colon therpay. The question is whether you want to know the truth of prove yourself right? I really appreciate your body of knowlege and the many insights into nutrution, but am surprised by your rigidity all the same.

J.S,

Just to close the subject on colon irrigation, here are some photos. They are real, I have seen these things with my eyes.

Dave

Thanks. I will have a look soon (when my internet connection is better). I live now in India and network sucks, but there is plenty of ghee!

I just discovered that Macadamia nuts (and oil) are excellent, as they have very small amount of omega 6 and hardly any anti-nutrients. The oil is supposed to be the new 'olive oil'.

by the way, regarding Ghee, do you guys know that the Ghee in India is not made from cow milk but from Buffalo milk? Buffalo milk is much more thick, rich, double fat, protein and minerals and is much more tasty as well.