[quote]mertdawg wrote:
On a typical day my fat intake is 50% to 60% fat with about 2650 total calories. It is easier to calculate what’s left over as I probably average 150 grams of carbs and 170 grams of protein.
[/quote]
Am I reading that right? Your macronutrient ratios are ~51% fat ~23% carb and ~26% protein? Wow, that’s a lot of fat. I bet you feel full most of the time?
[quote]DRG wrote:
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
On a typical day my fat intake is 50% to 60% fat with about 2650 total calories. It is easier to calculate what’s left over as I probably average 150 grams of carbs and 170 grams of protein.
[/quote]
Am I reading that right? Your macronutrient ratios are ~51% fat ~23% carb and ~26% protein? Wow, that’s a lot of fat. I bet you feel full most of the time?[/quote]
There are a number of people higher than that, myself included.
[quote]DRG wrote:
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
On a typical day my fat intake is 50% to 60% fat with about 2650 total calories. It is easier to calculate what’s left over as I probably average 150 grams of carbs and 170 grams of protein.
[/quote]
Am I reading that right? Your macronutrient ratios are ~51% fat ~23% carb and ~26% protein? Wow, that’s a lot of fat. I bet you feel full most of the time?[/quote]
That is right. Keep in mind that humans today are the only “largish” animal that doesn’t get over 50% of its calories from fat. Its not like there are large, longer lived animals running around eating grains and fruit. Carnivores get protein and fat (maybe 70% fat) and large herbivores like Elephants, Gorilla, Cows and Whales live 70% off of FAT because they eat mostly cellulose, and that can only be used as fuel when it is turned into fatty acids by gut flora.
GORILLAS
Check out the macronutriets for Gorillas that eat only plants: http://jn.nutrition.org/content/127/10/2000.full
The macronutrient profile of this diet would be as follows: 2.5% energy as fat, 24.3% protein, 15.8% available carbohydrate, with potentially 57.3% of metabolizable energy from short-chain fatty acids (SCFA) derived from colonic fermentation of fiber.
So they get about 24% protein, 16% carbs, and 2.5% from actual fat, but 57% from fatty acids produced from huge amounts of fiber in the gut via fermentation. That’s basically 60% fat.
DOGS
Protein/Fat/Carb: 30%:63%:7%
http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2012/10/17/beheco.ars168.full
CATS
Protein/Fat/Carb
52:36:12 More protein in place of fat, but just 12% carbs, and cats are obligate carnivores and specialized to burn protein for fuel. Cats still get three times the cals from fat as carbs, but they have high metabolisms so they basically add extra protein on top of an otherwise mostly fat diet.
Not only that, but aside from every other mammal naturally getting at least 3 calories of fat per calorie of carbs, the fat in all mammals diet is 70-90% saturated fat. Yes, every other mammal lives on mostly saturated fat. We are exceptions because we have cereal grains which we spent 10,000 years learning to detoxify, and human skeletons become smaller and frailer immediately when ceriel grains became the staple food source. Not only do they all live mostly on fat, and on saturated fat, but they all live mostly on saturated animal fat, because they either eat it, or they have gut bacteria produce short chain fatty acids that become animal fat.
Edible cereal grains are the very defintion of a processed, unnatural, engineered food.
I hadn’t heard of a high fat anabolic diet before you mentioned it and I looked around a bit. I do see some value to it so I will give it a try.
Although the comparison to other large mammals diets doesn’t justify the diet in my thinking since we are the only large mammals able to earn a paycheck and buy all the whole foods we went whenever we want I do like the idea of increased testosterone and HgH production and believe that easily justifies a trial run of the approach.
Did you find that you needed to lower your total calories with this approach? For example, I am on about 3200 call with a 24% fat 50% carb and 26% protein ratio but from what I am reading would probably want to target around 2800 total calories on the high fat diet? What do you think?
[quote]DRG wrote:
I hadn’t heard of a high fat anabolic diet before you mentioned it and I looked around a bit. I do see some value to it so I will give it a try.
Although the comparison to other large mammals diets doesn’t justify the diet in my thinking since we are the only large mammals able to earn a paycheck and buy all the whole foods we went whenever we want I do like the idea of increased testosterone and HgH production and believe that easily justifies a trial run of the approach.
Did you find that you needed to lower your total calories with this approach? For example, I am on about 3200 call with a 24% fat 50% carb and 26% protein ratio but from what I am reading would probably want to target around 2800 total calories on the high fat diet? What do you think? [/quote]
I actually think it’s probably the opposite. Cutting out easy energy carbs, your body may need more calories.
I would set your baseline daily caloric needs at about the 20/60/20 ratio protein, fat, carbs
Then I would add carbs and protein to gain muscle (which would lower the percent from fat)
And I would cut FAT not carbs from the baseline to reduce bodyfat, because the carbs are already dialed in at the level to optimize blood sugar levels and insulin sensitivity.
So you might take the baseline and add a PWO carb and protein drink of 300 cals to gain.
Or cut 300 cals of fat to lose.
I don’t really feel like I need to eat less though to stay healthy. I naturally don’t feel like eating as much. And since fat provides energy at a low, steady level for 10 hours, and slows down the rate of carb and protein absorption too, you can eat 2 larger meals and not get energy highs or lows. You may run at a 95 blood sugar +/- 5 points all day long. You also limit triglycerides from carb spillover.
Don’t you think the fact that other mammals thrive on either eating saturated fat, or having saturated fat basically injected into their bloodstream by fermenting gut bacteria, to the tune of 60-75% of their calories says something about a natural macronutrient profile.
The question is why do we choose a sugar and starch based diet? We get blood sugars go up and down. We stress our insulin production. We are on pace to have 33% of Americans diabetic in 50 years and guess what we eat more of than we did 100 years ago? Grains, sugar, and high omega-6 oils. Guess what we eat less of? Butter, organ meat.
Do you think other mammals would be healthier on a high starch diet?
If you think that the fat content of a diet contributes to heart disease or cancer or other diseases, independent of the potential for excess in calories, it just is not true. We implicated fat when we were frying things in zero cholesterol high omega-6 oils. Remove omega-6s and sugar and we have basically NO dietary cause of heart disease to any other food source left, (aside from possibly autoimmune related causes that correlate strongly to high starch diets).
[quote]DoubleDuce wrote:
[quote]DRG wrote:
I hadn’t heard of a high fat anabolic diet before you mentioned it and I looked around a bit. I do see some value to it so I will give it a try.
Although the comparison to other large mammals diets doesn’t justify the diet in my thinking since we are the only large mammals able to earn a paycheck and buy all the whole foods we went whenever we want I do like the idea of increased testosterone and HgH production and believe that easily justifies a trial run of the approach.
Did you find that you needed to lower your total calories with this approach? For example, I am on about 3200 call with a 24% fat 50% carb and 26% protein ratio but from what I am reading would probably want to target around 2800 total calories on the high fat diet? What do you think? [/quote]
I actually think it’s probably the opposite. Cutting out easy energy carbs, your body may need more calories.[/quote]
Yea, because you don’t have carb spillover every day during period of the day, you can probably eat more without having fat gain, but at the same time, the fat based diet autoregulates you. If you get your protein needs, and IMO enough carbs to optimize insulin sensitivity, and post workout needs, I think you tend to self regulate your fat.
Great information mertdawg.
My point on the “why adopt a high fat diet question” is that we, as an evolved species, shouldn’t choose to eat a certain way ONLY because non-evolved species eat that way. They don’t have the capacity to reason so they aren’t making a choice. So my point is that if there is a reason to eat this way (I.E. HgH and Testosterone increase, or something else we are after) then it makes perfect sense. But frankly, I don’t intend to do anything just because a dog or a cat does it. Although some things they are able to do might be kind of fun. 
Cheers!
[quote]DRG wrote:
Great information mertdawg.
My point on the “why adopt a high fat diet question” is that we, as an evolved species, shouldn’t choose to eat a certain way ONLY because non-evolved species eat that way. They don’t have the capacity to reason so they aren’t making a choice. So my point is that if there is a reason to eat this way (I.E. HgH and Testosterone increase, or something else we are after) then it makes perfect sense. But frankly, I don’t intend to do anything just because a dog or a cat does it. Although some things they are able to do might be kind of fun.
Cheers!
[/quote]
Humans also have the ability to choose things like suicide, the ability to choose something isn’t real good justification.
We cannot, however, choose to change our physiology. If our physiology sets us up to run well on fat and develop disease when we choose other fuel sources, your choice doesn’t change that.
Basically anytime you take an animal and feed it on things outside of their naturally evolved diet, the animal becomes less healthy. Feed a penguin on nectar and make a humming bird eat fish, and they will probably both die pretty quick. It’s pretty common sense when they feed animals in the zoo what they would eat in the wild. You don’t see a zoo trying to switch lions to plant based diets, but that’s exactly what we’ve done with ourselves through our own choice.
[quote]DRG wrote:
Great information mertdawg.
My point on the “why adopt a high fat diet question” is that we, as an evolved species, shouldn’t choose to eat a certain way ONLY because non-evolved species eat that way.
[/quote]
My question is why did we choose to each starches, particularly cereal grains in the first place? What ever gave anyone the idea that eating a carb based diet was healthy? We were told (at different points in history) it was healthy because 1) you can fill up more people if you force them to be primary consumers than secondary consumers 2) You can store massive stores of grains in bins for several years to survive droughts 3) agri business is big business and pays the government to say that grains should be the dietary staple, they fund diabetes and heart disease research too 4) Perfectly clean and healthy saturated animal fat and animal protein got combined with high omega 6 plant fats, or the non-saturated fraction of animal fat got hydrogenated, creating trans fats, or the animals started getting fed a high omega 6 diet and their omega 6 content went from 3% to 30% just like ours.
Politics (in the large sense), to protect the grain, bean, plant oil etc industry chose to conclude that it was the animal components of mixed foods that was the problem. Remember when quidelines for <30% fat and <20% fat caused food producers to add sugar to foods to lower the fat percentage (its still happening).
Fat percentage of dietary calories, by itself, has a negative correlation to mortality and positive to lifespan. Saturated fat as a percentage of calories has a negative correlation to mortality and a positive correlation to lifespan. Carbs have the opposite, again when the effects of other variables are removed.
Hunter-Gatherer Macronutrient Ratios: More Data
Posted by Paul Jaminet on February 3, 2011 Leave a comment (47)Go to comments
At the very beginning of our book?s macronutrient discussion (p 8), we offer four reasons to believe in a macronutrient intake around 30% carb, 55% fat, 15% protein ? a relatively low-carb diet by modern standards. (Note: these ratios were updated slightly in our 2012 edition.)
One of them is that hunter-gatherer populations ate approximately in these proportions. Our cite was a 2006 review paper by Loren Cordain [1] that was based on an earlier paper (by Cordain, Janette Brand-Miller, S. Boyd Eaton, and others) in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition [2]. These papers estimated hunter-gatherer diets from data in JP Gray?s 1999 corrected version of the 1967 Ethnographic Atlas of GP Murdock. [3]
The Cordain et al paper in AJCN was accompanied by an editorial from Katherine Milton [4] and a series of letters. Milton argued [5] that the underlying data was unreliable. Chris Masterjohn summarized her point in his review of our book:
Katherine Milton has pointed out (here) that when ?casual agriculturists? and hunters that hunt with modern guns are excluded, Cordain?s 229 ?hunter-gatherers? are reduced to only 24. Although Milton often seems biased in favor of plant foods, I?m not sure how much ?hunter-gatherers? hunting with modern guns can tell us about what humans were eating 40,000 years ago.
The Ethnographic Atlas was compiled from anthropological contacts early in the 20th century, long after first contact of these peoples with modern societies. The peoples involved had changed their lifestyles based on trade, acquiring guns and other tools as well as access to agricultural goods. Milton was concerned that these acquisitions may have distorted their diets. Milton was also concerned that the (largely male) anthropologists who collected the data may have neglected the activities of women, who gathered plant foods, in favor of men, who hunted.
Milton presented no data of her own. Clearly it would be desirable to have data acquired directly from hunter-gatherer tribes not using guns or agriculture, and from a source other than Cordain and Eaton, whose version of the Paleo diet looks suspiciously influenced by the lipid hypothesis.
Well, we?re in luck.
Miki Ben Dor of the Hebrew-language blog Paleostyle has written to tell me of an interesting 2000 paper [6] by anthropologists Hillard Kaplan, Kim Hill, Jane Lancaster, and Ana Magdalena Hurtado in the journal Evolutionary Anthropology. Hurtado and Hill later became collaborators on Cordain?s acne paper [7].
Miki discusses the paper in Hebrew here. (Miki, by the way, wrote a very nice review of our book here.) For the benefit of those who don?t read Hebrew, I thought I?d present the data.
The Data
The authors present data on diets from nine hunter-gatherer cultures. The essentials are in this table (click to enlarge):
Seeds and nuts are significant only for the !Kung, who ate mongongo nuts, which provide primarily fat calories.
Fruit was a large source of calories only for the Nukak, Gwi, and Hadza. The ?fruit? the Nukak of Colombia eat is the palm fruit, which has a small amount of starch but whose calories consist overwhelmingly of fat calories from palm oil. Palm oil is a healthy oil that is 50% saturated fat, 40% monounsaturated fat. The ?fruit? the Hadza ate was also fatty, averaging 1200 calories/pound compared to 200 calories/pound for sweet fruits; sources included Baobab fruit and Kongoro berry. The Gwi San consumed melons, a sweet fruit.
Save for the Nukak and Hadza, the sum of root, fruit, and ?other plant? intake is a fair approximation to total carb plus fiber calories. These added up to 242 calories/day for the Onge, 137 calories/day for the Anbarra, 469 calories/day for the Arnhem, 277 calories for the Ache, 386 for the Hiwi, 300 for the !Kung, and 1200 for the Gwi. In all cases except the Gwi, carb intake was less than 20% of calories.
For the Nukak, carb intake was probably also in this range. So seven of nine cultures ate 10% to 20% carbs; for the Gwi San a majority of calories were carbs, and for the Hadza perhaps 40% of calories were carbs.
Meanwhile, foods obtained by men ? primarily meat ? provided 70% to 85% of calories for the Onge, Anbarra, Arnhem, Ache and Hiwi; 60% for the Nukak, about 50% for the !Kung, and 65% for the Hadza. [Table 2]
Another interesting observation from this data is that fruits were generally a less important source of calories than roots. It is likely that starches have outweighed sugars as a source of calories for humans for at least the last 2 million years.
Conclusion
In the book we argued that most hunter-gatherer cultures, when they weren?t constrained by Malthusian population pressures and famines, probably ate close to a 20% carb, 65% fat, 15% protein macronutrient ratio.
This data is largely consistent with that. Indeed, most cultures seem to have eaten slightly less than 20% carbs.
This paper does not provide sufficient data to break down the protein vs fat composition of the diets. But since protein seems to be eaten to a specific target of around 15% of energy / 360 calories by nearly all observed cultures, we can guess that that?s how hunter-gatherers ate as well. The acquisition of fat calories from fatty fruits and nuts, like palm fruits, confirms that fat was sought after.
The preference for starchy roots and tubers over sugary fruits is also no surprise. Not only are roots and tubers more calorie rich than most fruits, they are also (given the problematic nature of fructose) probably the healthier choice!
We don?t idolize Paleolithic or modern hunter-gatherer diets, so I won?t say that this data by itself proves our diet is correct. But I think it does add to the evidence that ancestral humans ate a diet that closely resembles ours.
References
[1] Cordain, L. ?Implications of Plio-Pleistocene Hominin Diets for Modern Humans,? pp 363-383 in Peter S. Ungar, ed., Evolution of the human diet: the known, the unknown, and the unknowable, New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. http://www.thepaleodiet.com/articles/2006_Oxford.pdf.
[2] Cordain L et al. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Mar;71(3):682-92. Plant-animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter-gatherer diets - PubMed.
[3] Gray JP. A corrected ethnographic atlas. World Cultures J 1999; 10:24?85. Murdock GP. Ethnographic atlas: a summary. Ethnology 1967; 6:109?236.
[4] Milton K. Hunter-gatherer diets?a different perspective. Am J Clin Nutr. 2000 Mar;71(3):665-7. Hunter-gatherer diets-a different perspective - PubMed.
[5] Milton K. Reply to L. Cordain et al. Am J Clin Nutr 2000 Dec;72(6):1590-1592. http://www.ajcn.org/content/72/6/1590.full.
[6] Kaplan HS, Hill KR, Lancaster JB, Hurtado AM. A Theory of Human Life History Evolution: Diet, Intelligence, and Longevity. Evolutionary Anthropology 9:156-185, 2000. http://www.unm.edu/~hkaplan/KaplanHillLancasterHurtado_2000_LHEvolution.pdf.
[7] Cordain L et al. Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization. Arch Dermatol. 2002 Dec;138(12):1584-90. Acne vulgaris: a disease of Western civilization - PubMed.
Mertdawg, did not want to start a whole new thread to ask but, when it comes to fish oil what should be the max ratio in favor of omega 3 or is total grams more of an issue?
I take 4-8 Flameout a day but, rarely if ever go above 3 g of omega 6.
That is tough, but from what I have seen, you get all of the benefits and none of the harms with 2-4 grams of omega 3s. More OR less is not necessarily good.
So if you keep your omega 6s that low, 1:1 is fine. There is no benefit either in getting Omega 6s under a 1:1 ratio with 2-4 grams of omega 3s a day. I don’t think that there is evidence of harm having omega 6s anywhere between about 3-8 grams a day on a 2500 cal diet.
Actually some people may get skin problems going down in the low end of the 3-8 range, and do better in the higher end.
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
That is tough, but from what I have seen, you get all of the benefits and none of the harms with 2-4 grams of omega 3s. More OR less is not necessarily good.
So if you keep your omega 6s that low, 1:1 is fine. There is no benefit either in getting Omega 6s under a 1:1 ratio with 2-4 grams of omega 3s a day. I don’t think that there is evidence of harm having omega 6s anywhere between about 3-8 grams a day on a 2500 cal diet.
Actually some people may get skin problems going down in the low end of the 3-8 range, and do better in the higher end.
[/quote]
Really? What kind of skin problems?
[quote]xXSeraphimXx wrote:
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
That is tough, but from what I have seen, you get all of the benefits and none of the harms with 2-4 grams of omega 3s. More OR less is not necessarily good.
So if you keep your omega 6s that low, 1:1 is fine. There is no benefit either in getting Omega 6s under a 1:1 ratio with 2-4 grams of omega 3s a day. I don’t think that there is evidence of harm having omega 6s anywhere between about 3-8 grams a day on a 2500 cal diet.
Actually some people may get skin problems going down in the low end of the 3-8 range, and do better in the higher end.
[/quote]
Really? What kind of skin problems?
[/quote]
Very dry skin I think. To specifically answer your prior question, I would say 1:1 because if Omega-3s are higher than 1:1 you either are putting your Omega-3s at least slightly above optimal range or your omega 6s slightly below optimal range.
2-4 omega 3 and 4-6 omega 6 will put you at levels that based on all of my research will produce zero harm due to excess and full benefits. (again prorated to a 2500 calorie diet).
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
The most common recommendation for Crohn’s is to eat white rice. Do you eat omega-6 (or omega-3) rich oils? Brown rice has very minimal fiber though which is good since psyllium causes leaky gut and exacerbates autoimmune flare ups. I’ll look more into it. Maybe the brown rice helps move other problematic substances through, or sops them up, or maybe it has something that helps good bacteria. [/quote]
Found anything yet? Would be appreciated, cheers.
This topic is fascinating
Thanks a lot for your contributions mertdawg.
Will have to consider a transition from 30% fat at most to higher percentages, knowing that my goal is lean gains
Raising the amount of coconut in my diet might have been the best thing in the last 4 months. Soooo much better libido aha
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
Basically we are on pace to have 1/3 of Americans with type II diabetes by 2050. It is autoimmune. Autoimmune disease is almost certainly instigated by leaky gut and bad gut flora resulting from grains and beans. [/quote]
Problems with such objections to legumes include that the only food type which amount of consumption is consistently (every time, if I recall correctly) correlated with longevity among multiple cultures across the world, and that any number of cultures over a long period of time have consumed plenty of legumes without Type II diabetes being common at all.
I know the Paleo people believe man did not eat legumes until the Neolithic era. It is, however, not only an evidence-free claim, but a virtually incredible claim, given their abundance in Africa and the ease with which many may be eaten.
Also 200g of each macros makes for a 50% fat / 25% carbs and proteins. That’s too easy!
Out of curiosity though, how do you explain the countless number of people (non occidental cultures) that are on a 70/20/10, if not 80/10/10 diets with LOADS of carbs, and don’t even care about stuff like that actually. Just eating natural sources of food, mainly fruits and vegs