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Cake day: July 6th, 2023

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  • Dietary advice based on the food pyramid/MyPlate. Before the late '70s, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity, and mental illnesses were all rare in the general population.

    We need to be eating fewer carbohydrates, not basing our diets around them. We need to be getting most of our calories from fat, not demonising it.

    Thankfully, we have people like Dr. Ken Berry, Dr. Chris Palmer, Dr. Anthony Chaffee, Dr. Georgia Ede, Dr. Shawn Baker, Dr. Paul Mason, Dr. Tony Hampton, Dr. Jason Fung, and others spreading this message.







  • Because:

    • Ruminants like cows repair our depleating topsoil via regenerative farming (our current approach of using petroleum-based fertilisers is not sustainable)
    • A single cow’s life can feed a human for 1 to 2 years, compared to the many incidentally killed animals (insects, rodents, frogs, birds, etc.) during the growing and harvesting of crops, plus the destruction of entire ecosystems to create the mono-crop farms in the first place
    • Humans need to eat lots of fat to be physically and mentally healthy, and beef provides lots of fat (the low-fat high-carbohydrate diets recommended by various agencies — starting with the US’s department of agriculture in the late '70s via the food pyramid — are making us sick, with once-rare diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression, and dementia now commonplace)




  • Addressing many common diseases such as cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, arthritis, PCOS, depression, anxiety, and ADHD. All of these are metabolic diseases that were rare in human populations around the world just 50 years ago.

    Contrary to what the US’s department of agriculture says (that we should eat mostly plants via the Food Pyramid/MyPlate) starting in the late '70s, it turns out that the human species has evolved over >2 million years to hunt animals. Of the three macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins, and fats), we should be getting most of our calories from fats via fatty meats.

    The growing popularity and success of ketogenic diets (especially the carnivore diet) in reversing many metabolic diseases once thought to be incurable and attributed to age is a sign that humans have finally rediscovered our species-appropriate diet.


  • Nutritional meta-studies are based on individual studies. If the foundation is composed of correlation studies, such a meta-study would still not be able to show causation.

    I was disappointed in the science of nutrition compared to other disciplines, which is why I looked to adjacent fields of study, like anatomy, evolution, biology, psychology, anthropology, archeology, and the history of the study of nutrition itself.

    Modern humans have been around for ~300,000 years, and humans have been around for ~2 million years. Looking at our diets across the last several centuries isn’t enough to get a clear understanding as we haven’t significantly changed anatomically for hundreds of thousands of years. Humans have become apex predators not from scavenging for vegetables and fruits.

    Humans have thrived through multiple ice ages where vegetables and fruit were scarce as hunters of megafauna. Our anatomy and unique adaptations suggest that there were strong evolutionary pressures that shaped us into the apex predators we are, despite not having large claws, horns, teeth, jaws, etc. that are typical of other apex predators.

    Humans handle fatty meat very well. The growing popularity of the carnivore diet is a testament to this, with several practicing medical doctors starting to speak out in support of it. On the other hand, various populations handle different vegetation with mixed results. For example, a large minority of many populations still can’t handle bread, of all things, very well.

    You should double-check those studies, as they are likely to be correlation studies that do not prove causation and are riddled with confounding factors.



  • From evolution.

    Plants are living organisms, and they do not want to be eaten, so they have evolved many defences to that end. They cannot run away nor physically fight back, yet they are one of the most successful kingdoms on Earth.

    How do plants protect themselves? Their primary form of defence is chemical warfare. Plants produce chemicals like oxalates, lectins, phytates, cyanide, hormone disruptors, nutrient blockers, and carcinogens to discourage animals from eating them.

    Animals and plants have been evolving together in a never-ending evolutionary arms race for millions of years, wherein animals develop adaptations to be able to break down the plants’ defence chemicals safely, and plants evolve stronger defence chemicals. In nature, we see this manifest in herbivores being very specialised in the types of plants they can eat without getting sick. This is why we don’t see every animal desolating entire swaths of forests, marshes, grasslands, etc.

    Humans, too, are animals, and it was only in the last 12,000 years or so when we invented agriculture and settled down, thus entering a new age of heavy plant intake. Almost immediately, we experienced negative effects such as a shrinkage of brain size, a shorter stature, and poor teeth health. However, while relying on plants at the individual level resulted in health sacrifices, especially later on in life, at the societal level, agriculture provided a means to dramatically increase a settlement’s population size and strength.

    Humans still instinctively know to not eat plants unless necessary to survive. For example, if you were thrown into the middle of a forest, you would know that eating most of the plants around you will immediately make you sick. Parents also frequently see this when they force their kids to eat so-called healthy foods such as broccoli, spinach, and Brussels sprouts, which the kids will intuitively avoid, but are forced to accept in the name of health.

    Essentially, each species has a species-appropriate diet, and humans are not special. We have specific adaptations for specific foods for optimum health, just like every other species — we’ve just forgotten what that is.