Can someone please tell me what the fuck “NOT MEANT” in the context of “not meant to eat” means?
I’ve been hearing this for years now, particularly in the talk fitness gurus (no names needed) on evolution when in every (or what seems to be every) case NONE of these people have a degree in a life science, history, or physical anthropology.
Tell me what “NOT MEANT” means. And tell me what is “MEANT” to be eaten.
Dude - anything that will allow your body to produce ATP will keep you alive - I don’t care what the fuck it is, as long as it has nutrients, and isn’t poisonous…
So in that case, I think ANYTHING is meant to be eaten if you don’t want to fucking die, in case you were starving to death and thought maybe you shouldn’t eat that loaf of plain white bread… ; )
Talking in physique terms? That’s a different story… but I generally hate those all or nothing propositions… NOT MEANT to eat grains? Ok, but they work for the intended purposes - but NOT MEANT, or NOT PHYSIQUE FRIENDLY (and I mean in terms of leanness) wind up being synonymous with these guys.
Play-dough, paste, and your boogers are not meant to be eaten.
[quote]gabex wrote:
Play-dough, paste, and your boogers are not meant to be eaten. [/quote]
The first 2 can be made to be edible.
Boogers…well, some people seem to have a weurd fetish for such things. I just stay outta the way.
Studies estimate that 75% of the world adult population is lactase enzyme deficient (thus, lactose intolerant). The frequency of the genetic variants differs enormously by ethnicity - lactose intolerance is pretty much universal among Native Americans but very uncommon in natives of Sweden, for example.
I think such conclusions would indicate that those people are not meant to eat those foods, as their bodies lack the ability to fully digest them. Is it going to kill them to eat it? Not at all, but the same thing is true about paper and tanbark.
Certain peoples digestive tracks simply cannot handle certain foods, and I think that is a fair definition of not mean to eat. Just my thoughts on the topic.
For example, Nate Green recently wrote in his blog something similar to (not in the mood to look up), “I don’t think grains were meant to be eaten by man” or something like that. What does this mean?! It’s almost unquantifiable (correct word?). He approves of Surge though, which is as man made as a nutrition item gets!
Should we not take medicine, especially considering it seems like new and effective ones come out every few years or decade or so? I mean after all, if it came out last year, or maybe even yesterday or today, clearly man wasn’t taking it for THOUSANDS of years, making it impossible for us to evolve with the drug.
Technology has allowed us to do shit with food that has made us healthier and given us better physiques and performance. I have no idea what this is all about.
Anyway, one of the reasons we did start to cultivate grains was so that we can stop being a nomadic society and become a stable one. That is, so we can stay in the same place and have a village, town, or city and not have to constantly hunt and gather. If we constantly had to hunt and gather, walk to the community latrine, draw a bath, light fires, then we sure wouldn’t be as evolved as we are today. (See the work of Dr. Phinney despite him being a low carb guy. He goes over this evolutionary process of grain cultivation.)
Sky, great post! If we fucking eat it, it provides nutrients and energy, and we perform better with it, then it’s MEANT for consumption. I just want to know what’s not meant, considering the human body CAN digest some pretty nasty things.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Technology has allowed us to do shit with food that has made us healthier and given us better physiques and performance. I have no idea what this is all about.
[/quote]
The exact opposite is also true, and ultimately you are failing to look at both sides of the coin. I think taking a more open view on the subject would help you to see why some people make the arguments that they do.
Most of our society has turned towards foods that have been derived for convenience for the customer, and profit for the producer.
If you don’t think that certain foods can help/hurt the human body, than don’t read the articles or research, you are well entitled to your own beliefs. I do acknowledge that there are plenty of people whose lives have been changed dramatically for the better because of food allergy/GI tract related solutions, and there are also tons of people that can eat complete “junk” and be fine.
I think it would behoove you to take a more scientific approach in your search for an answer to your original question, if you care, and if not, than don’t worry about it.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
For example, Nate Green recently wrote in his blog something similar to (not in the mood to look up), “I don’t think grains were meant to be eaten by man” or something like that. What does this mean?! It’s almost unquantifiable (correct word?). He approves of Surge though, which is as man made as a nutrition item gets!
Should we not take medicine, especially considering it seems like new and effective ones come out every few years or decade or so? I mean after all, if it came out last year, or maybe even yesterday or today, clearly man wasn’t taking it for THOUSANDS of years, making it impossible for us to evolve with the drug.
Technology has allowed us to do shit with food that has made us healthier and given us better physiques and performance. I have no idea what this is all about.
Anyway, one of the reasons we did start to cultivate grains was so that we can stop being a nomadic society and become a stable one. That is, so we can stay in the same place and have a village, town, or city and not have to constantly hunt and gather. If we constantly had to hunt and gather, walk to the community latrine, draw a bath, light fires, then we sure wouldn’t be as evolved as we are today. (See the work of Dr. Phinney despite him being a low carb guy. He goes over this evolutionary process of grain cultivation.)
Sky, great post! If we fucking eat it, it provides nutrients and energy, and we perform better with it, then it’s MEANT for consumption. I just want to know what’s not meant, considering the human body CAN digest some pretty nasty things.
[/quote]
Medicines may be man-developed but they do not make you fat.
Processed grains have not been around long enough in evolution for human to adapt to properly digest them.
Humans ARE good at digesting fruits, vegetables, legumes, etc. Have you ever seen a person become obese from eating a bag of apples? Now how about a bag of cheetoes? Different story there.
Sure energy is energy, and you can eat it, but we were NOT MEANT to eat some things efficiently in our lifetime without adverse side effects.
I think the obesity problem should say enough about the foods we were NOT MEANT to eat.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
For example, Nate Green recently wrote in his blog something similar to (not in the mood to look up), “I don’t think grains were meant to be eaten by man” or something like that. What does this mean?! It’s almost unquantifiable (correct word?). He approves of Surge though, which is as man made as a nutrition item gets!
Should we not take medicine, especially considering it seems like new and effective ones come out every few years or decade or so? I mean after all, if it came out last year, or maybe even yesterday or today, clearly man wasn’t taking it for THOUSANDS of years, making it impossible for us to evolve with the drug.
Technology has allowed us to do shit with food that has made us healthier and given us better physiques and performance. I have no idea what this is all about.
Anyway, one of the reasons we did start to cultivate grains was so that we can stop being a nomadic society and become a stable one. That is, so we can stay in the same place and have a village, town, or city and not have to constantly hunt and gather. If we constantly had to hunt and gather, walk to the community latrine, draw a bath, light fires, then we sure wouldn’t be as evolved as we are today. (See the work of Dr. Phinney despite him being a low carb guy. He goes over this evolutionary process of grain cultivation.)
Sky, great post! If we fucking eat it, it provides nutrients and energy, and we perform better with it, then it’s MEANT for consumption. I just want to know what’s not meant, considering the human body CAN digest some pretty nasty things.
[/quote]
‘Not meant’, to me simply means that ’ would not be found in nature in suficcient amounts to be a large part of the diet and so the body hasn’t adapted fully to cope with it’ . BS or not - indigenous people all over the world seem to have a problem with alcohol because their diet hasn’t contained wheat or other grains for milennia, leading to a lack of the enzyme that breaks the alcohol down.
The term is used a bit loosely though. I wish authors would write more clearly than using muddy pop culture phrases when talking about human physiology.
Nice try Brick, but this thread is going to turn retarded FAST…lol…
I appreciate the feedback, but there are more factors that lead to fatness.
Mike Phelps consumes 10,000 calories daily consisting mostly of convenience and “not meant to eat” food and he’s pretty darn lean!
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
I appreciate the feedback, but there are more factors that lead to fatness.
Mike Phelps consumes 10,000 calories daily consisting mostly of convenience and “not meant to eat” food and he’s pretty darn lean! [/quote]
He’s also a genetic freak who won 8 gold medals. Put anyone on his diet and they’ll balloon up to 300lbs pretty damn fast.
Human beings are not meant to eat grains because the body’s response to grain is far different than an equivalent source of carbs from fruits/vegetables. Consuming 100 grams of grains will cause the body to panic because so much glucose has entered the blood extremely quickly. Glucose is a (literal) poison in the blood stream, so the body needs to shunt that glucose into cells as quickly as possible.
As a result, massive amounts of insulin are pumped by the pancreas. Over time, constant stimulation of cells by insulin reads to resistance (it’s a similar mechanism by which you get used to a smell in a room, just over a much longer timescale). The rest is Type 2 Diabetes or metabolic syndrome. Grain is also devoid of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients. In fact, several of the proteins in grain actively sequester nutrients away, effective robbing your body of vitamins and minerals.
This is what people mean when they say that we weren’t meant to eat grains or whatever. The human body developed to eat certain types of foods: fruits, vegetables, meat, fish.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
I appreciate the feedback, but there are more factors that lead to fatness.
Mike Phelps consumes 10,000 calories daily consisting mostly of convenience and “not meant to eat” food and he’s pretty darn lean! [/quote]
I think you’re trying to simplify this far too much. You can’t just look at the scale of a population (e.g. Swedish, Native American) and start pigeon-holing them as a whole into “can eat” and “shouldn’t eat” certain things. Such broad brush strokes might be useful as a general guide, but miss many fine details.
The genetic diversity among people within populations is so large that no two people from the same population will have identical tolerances to certain foodstuffs. I have several friends who can eat white pasta and cake at 11pm every night and still be as lean as greyhounds. I can’t do this, as I experience a delightful combination of bloat and fat gain that makes me look terrible.
Your point about Mike Phelps is just another example of how different people can get away with different things. I learned a long time ago that it doesn’t matter what “everyone else” is doing, because it doesn’t work for me. Great news for Mikey P that he can eat junk and still look ripped. My genotype is likely completely different from his so why should I expect to be able to do the same by default?
Only you can really work out what works for you, mainly by lots of trial and error. Bad news if one of your favourite foods is one of the worst things for you physique-wise. That’s the roll of the dice.
Personally, I use it when I mean that not everyone has the enzymes to digest it. But my main argument against certain foods is ‘your body doesn’t NEED carbs in that high of quantity.’ We need proteins and EFAs, but we can make ketones for brain energy. Carbs aren’t bad, but I usually use it when somebody thinks it’s healthy to eat some crappy carb source because it is ‘low in fat.’
But, I do get the ‘wtf do you mean by that?’
[quote]0mar wrote:
Consuming 100 grams of grains will cause the body to panic because so much glucose has entered the blood extremely quickly. Glucose is a (literal) poison in the blood stream, so the body needs to shunt that glucose into cells as quickly as possible.
Grain is also devoid of vitamins, minerals and micronutrients.
[/quote]
These are two horrendously misinformed statements to make. Why pick glucose as a “poison”? Any substance that reaches too high a concentration in the blood is a “poison”. Amino acids can have this effect too. Were we not meant to have them? These things only become harmful when natural homeostatic mechanisms break down (as in diabetes).
Why are grains SO bad? Do you not think you can get an identical insulin surge from fruits? Go and eat 100g of apricots, or mango. Kapow! Probably more of an insulin surge compared to 100g of oats. Dont demonise grains as some sort of supernatural insulin promoter.
Also, devoid of minerals and nutrients? Are you for real? Maybe processed grains are, but there are so many nutrients in the husk of ‘whole’ grains that I truly don’t know where you have plucked this statement from. Riboflavin, niacin, pantothenic acid. Its all there. (Hint: you need these things)
/rant.
[quote]0mar wrote:
Human beings are not meant to eat grains because the body’s response to grain is far different than an equivalent source of carbs from fruits/vegetables. Consuming 100 grams of grains will cause the body to panic because so much glucose has entered the blood extremely quickly. Glucose is a (literal) poison in the blood stream[/quote]
Lol…see Brick? What did I say?
It’s a good thing we have so many Bio-Chemists here to let us know the real deal! LOL…
[quote]SkyNett wrote:
[quote]0mar wrote:
Human beings are not meant to eat grains because the body’s response to grain is far different than an equivalent source of carbs from fruits/vegetables. Consuming 100 grams of grains will cause the body to panic because so much glucose has entered the blood extremely quickly. Glucose is a (literal) poison in the blood stream[/quote]
Lol…see Brick? What did I say?
It’s a good thing we have so many Bio-Chemists here to let us know the real deal! LOL…[/quote]
I agree SkyNett that statements like this are somewhat sensationalist. I do think that your taking a one sided look at this though Bricknyce, and maybe that’s because personally you’ve already made up your mind.
Picking out Phelps as an example is somewhat ignorant, as on the opposite end of the spectrum you have people that can become deathly ill after consuming a small amount of shellfish or nuts among other things.
Biologically, certain ethnicities are better/worse suited towards certain foods. Just look at Asians and their inability to break down acetaldehyde that is found in alcohol, due to a missense polymorphism that encodes the enzyme, acetaldehyde dehydrogenase.
I think that if your body can ingest, utilize, and dispose of a food without having negative side effects, than your probably meant to eat it, and if not, than your probably not meant to eat it. This will differ from person to person and ethnicity to ethnicity, so I think a simple answer is something that is not realistic.
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
I think that if your body can ingest, utilize, and dispose of a food without having negative side effects, than your probably meant to eat it, and if not, than your probably not meant to eat it. This will differ from person to person and ethnicity to ethnicity, so I think a simple answer is something that is not realistic.
[/quote]
I hear you, but I think it is a simple answer - if it will produce energy and keep you alive, and it doesn’t make you ill, then you were meant to eat it. Of course, any kind of basic, simple statement like that is subject to TONS of extrapolation and interpretation. But the short answer is if it can be utilized by your body to produce ATP, and it isn’t instantly harmful to you, you were meant to eat it.
[quote]SkyNett wrote:
if it can be utilized by your body to produce ATP, and it isn’t harmful to you, you were meant to eat it.[/quote]
In a simplistic world I can agree with that.
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
[quote]SkyNett wrote:
if it can be utilized by your body to produce ATP, and it isn’t harmful to you, you were meant to eat it.[/quote]
In a simplistic world I can agree with that.[/quote]
Lol… : )