Are most Somalis lactose intolerant?

[Shimbiris]

Those with Cushitic ancestry actually their own lactose persistence gene, 14010G>C. It is common among non-Horner pastoralists such as Maasai due to their high Cushitic ancestry, in fact they have a higher lactose persistence percentage than Europeans.

Wallahi, I never got too into Lactase persistence genes stuff even though I am something of a Horner genetics nerd. Didn't realize that and was misled into thinking Horners weren't very lactase persistent genetically. The Maasai seem to be 60% for that:

Lactase Persistence Alleles Reveal Partial East African Ancestry of Southern African Khoe Pastoralists

The ability to digest milk into adulthood, lactase persistence (LP), as well as specific genetic variants associated with LP, is heterogeneously distr…

www.sciencedirect.com

And Cushitic admixed South Africans have quite a bit too:

The frequency of the “East African” LP variant 14010C varies from 0% in Bantu-speaking groups to 20% in the Nama (Khoe) and 22.5% in the Askham Coloured group (Table 1).

Can't find a study mentioning Somalis from just skimming now but if the Maasai are at that level then Somalis must be north of 80%, lol. But yeah, the stuff about the microbiome and how many cultures, like East-Central Asian nomads and the Mediterraneans often consumed milk in its lactose depleted forms is quite valid too. Sourmilks, yogurts, butter, cream and ghee were big among Somalis as well. Same for the Maasai. I've had various raw milks myself and while they're all nice I must admit I've always preferred things like laban, kefir and yogurt.

 

[IhopeYouHaveAnAmazingDay]

brother how tall are you?

 

[Nalaaye floxks]

I don’t drink regular milk but r drink chocolate milks and i eat cheese and other dairy products

 

[The alchemist]

A quick explanation of this is basically an enzyme that helps digest the sugar lactose in milk. The people that continue to express this phenotype through genetic mutations throughout their life have a trait we call lactase persistence (LP), and digestion capacity that is high through known explicit gene profile formations is only common among a few populations.

A cohort of Somalis from Ethiopia was genetically screened for specific positive LP variants. It showed around 24% had selected for the alleles, with the digestion of dairy not correlating with this lack of persistence. The people that lacked the specific allele capacities seem to be able to consume dairy, something that is surprising with situations in the West where people don’t have that option without paying a physical price, among them malabsorption. This can be because of different pleiotropic effects that are hard to capture.

An interesting point is highlighted in an excerpt:

“In this study, we also report the unexpected finding that lactose digestion capacity is not necessarily correlated with milk consumption. This is contrary to our findings that individuals adapted their milk intake to reflect digester status in the Sudanese Jaali cohort (Ingram et al. 2007). The frequency of lactose digesters in this cohort is lower than might have been expected (24%), but agrees well with a large previously published study of the same ethnic group (Flatz 1987). It is possible that in this population, adaptation of the gut flora has occurred, allowing non-persistent individuals to consume lactose without symptoms. We did observe a general trend of lower starting breath hydrogen readings, and a large number of hydrogen non-producers in the Somali cohort, and this may signify increased colonic acidity (possibly due to dietary factors) which can prohibit colonization by hydrogen producing bacteria (Perman et al. 1981; Vogelsang et al. 1988). Whatever the nature of the adaptation that allows lactose non-digesters to consume milk in large quantities, the observation has implications for interpretation of the genetic pattern observed. This and the low lactase persistence frequency implies that the selective pressure has not acted to drive one particular lactase persistence allele to high frequency, and may indicate that selection has been either weak, or has fluctuated over time, which is possible if lactase persistence is more advantageous during periods of famine and drought. The underlying selective advantage of lactase persistence is still not clearly defined and further work is required in order to understand the circumstances under which selection for the phenotype increases, for example by studying two or three generations of a famine-exposed population.”

Two separate studies came respectively concluded that both sample sets placed the LP of those people at ~23-24%. There are intermediates, people who are in-between when it comes to gene expression, and there are people that lack those gene variants altogether. But this diversity and structure do not agree with the consumption of dairy, representing a staggering amount of 71% percent of the people studied claimed to have at least drunk one cup of milk a day. Still, I first believed Somalis had a considerable positive selective sweep for LP because of our historical mode of subsistence being pastoralism and it having a strong correlation to increased frequency of those similar lifestyles to carry alleles associated with the predictive phenotype.

The same phenomenon is observed with Nilotic populations demonstrated through various studies:

“The Nilotic populations of current-day South Sudan are dairy consuming pastoralists, which have been shown to be lactase persistent in low frequencies, but no alleles associated with LP have thus far been found.”

It is demonstrated that the Beja have three different LP allele variants at substantial and similar levels, resulting in one of the greatest frequencies of LP variants among all populations in the world, with a predicted phenotype of LP being around 90% (previous studies registered 64%-100%), both Beni Amer and Hadendowa showing almost similar results, with a degree of variance in frequency amount per LP alleles.

The Sudanese Arabs such as Ja’ali and Shagia show a similar type of LP of 41,7% in one study, with slight variations and some differences in allele frequency, one different expression and similar overlap in frequencies in a specific allele. The Bataheen have a higher LP at 66,7% (above the other Arab and Nubians), and to some degree, I think it has to be attributed to their very high Arabian ancestry and their camel breeding practices. The Nubians, on the contrary, show lower allele expression associated with this phenotype, farmers in general from East Africa have decreased amount. The Copts from Sudan showed no trace of it.

Interestingly, I’ve seen numbers from an older study showing Hima, Tutsi people from Rwanda and Uganda to have a 93% tolerance rate. Peulh (Fulani) to have 100%, and Tuareg 87%. Somehow I am certain those numbers will vary greatly across various studies depending on the cohort chosen from the same people, especially if they are distributed among disparate areas with ethnic complexity and diversity, assuming all things are controlled for. Findings from another study registered Fulanis on a lower scale of LP at 60%, giving ground for this assumption to be correct. The Sudanese Hausa has an absence of LP alleles, whereas their Cameroonian counterpart showed some presence of LP, in that same line of thinking, it would not come as a shock if Tuareg of other places than Niger demonstrated results showing higher or lesser amounts, extrapolating a bit.

 

[The alchemist]

Wallahi, I never got too into Lactase persistence genes stuff even though I am something of a Horner genetics nerd. Didn't realize that and was misled into thinking Horners weren't very lactase persistent genetically. The Maasai seem to be 60% for that:

Lactase Persistence Alleles Reveal Partial East African Ancestry of Southern African Khoe Pastoralists

The ability to digest milk into adulthood, lactase persistence (LP), as well as specific genetic variants associated with LP, is heterogeneously distr…

www.sciencedirect.com

And Cushitic admixed South Africans have quite a bit too:



Can't find a study mentioning Somalis from just skimming now but if the Maasai are at that level then Somalis must be north of 80%, lol. But yeah, the stuff about the microbiome and how many cultures, like East-Central Asian nomads and the Mediterraneans often consumed milk in its lactose depleted forms is quite valid too. Sourmilks, yogurts, butter, cream and ghee were big among Somalis as well. Same for the Maasai. I've had various raw milks myself and while they're all nice I must admit I've always preferred things like laban, kefir and yogurt.

The traditional diet of the Maasai is blood, milk, and meat. It is rich in lactose, fat, and cholesterol. It stands to reason, proven by a study in fact, that Masai people carry an adaptation for cholesterol homeostasis from a recent selection of genetic regulation. These nomadic pastoralists' cholesterol intake is very high (600-2000 mg/day), but the total average cholesterol serum levels are low (135mg/100ml). To give context that illustrates a perspective into how amazing this is, a cohort of mainly Western and East Asian populations had a cholesterol intake several times lower than the Masai of 141-612 mg/day, yet their range of serum cholesterol average was higher than 160-266 mg/100 ml. Comparing it to a high cholesterol consumption population like the Eskimos with an intake of 420-1650 mg/day had serum levels of 233 mg/100 ml.

These Southeast African people have low blood pressure and low rates of atherosclerosis (coronary artery disease). Basically, they received these genetic traits through selection pressures to adapt for protection against things like hypercholesterolemia and cardiac diseases. It’s fascinating how the Masais from Tanzania, despite consuming dietary sources with high fat and cholesterol content, express low levels of heart diseases, and other old age-related diseases as well.

 

[Shimbiris]

The traditional diet of the Maasai is blood, milk, and meat. It is rich in lactose, fat, and cholesterol. It stands to reason, proven by a study in fact, that Masai people carry an adaptation for cholesterol homeostasis from a recent selection of genetic regulation. These nomadic pastoralists' cholesterol intake is very high (600-2000 mg/day), but the total average cholesterol serum levels are low (135mg/100ml). To give context that illustrates a perspective into how amazing this is, a cohort of mainly Western and East Asian populations had a cholesterol intake several times lower than the Masai of 141-612 mg/day, yet their range of serum cholesterol average was higher than 160-266 mg/100 ml. Comparing it to a high cholesterol consumption population like the Eskimos with an intake of 420-1650 mg/day had serum levels of 233 mg/100 ml.

These Southeast African people have low blood pressure and low rates of atherosclerosis (coronary artery disease). Basically, they received these genetic traits through selection pressures to adapt for protection against things like hypercholesterolemia and cardiac diseases. It’s fascinating how the Masais from Tanzania, despite consuming dietary sources with high fat and cholesterol content, express low levels of heart diseases, and other old age-related diseases as well.

Walaalkay, cholesterol and saturated fat being the cause of atherosclerosis and heart disease in general is outdated 1900s gobbledygook that still rears its head a little to this day in some nutritional circles because nutrition "science" is more than a little handicapped and run by prideful old men who won't admit how wrong they were but even they consistently back peddle every year and keep backing off of cholesterol and saturated fat more and more in their annual reports. It has little to do with the Maasai having adaptations for cholesterol and everything to do with the fact that cholesterol is an important nutrient for all humans (yes) and is not harmful for the heart. It is hyperinsulinemic diets that are ultimately the root cause of heart disease and adjoining diseases like diabetes:












The FACTS about Cholesterol and Heart Disease. Things your doctor may not even know!


A lot of these low-carb, fasting and carnivore docs get some things wrong by not knowing what the randle cycle is and not realizing the issue isn't simply carbs but the combination of carbs and fats, particularly in processed forms, that is the root of most modern disease. And lo and behold, most junk foods like pizza, cheese burgers, popcorn or whatever else are exactly a union of that sort. You can be lean and skinny on a high-carb, extremely low fat diet like a Fruitarian diet and not be overweight or accumulate atherosclerotic plaque though you would be severely nutritionally depleted in the long-term and you can do the same on a low-carb, high fat and, contrary to the keto crowd, high protein diet particularly from animals and be well-nourished like our own pastoralist and HG ancestors. Nevertheless, what these docs definitely get right is that cholesterol and saturated fat are not a problem but arguably beneficial to the human being despite endogenous production. There are a lot of things like creatine, taurine and, yes, cholesterol our body makes by itself but that it seems to benefit from an exogenous supply of based on the literature and thousands of anecdotes I've seen over the years.

I consume absolutely ungodly amounts of cholesterol, saturated fat and monounsaturated fat from 99% animal foods everyday and have for many years. I haven't lifted weights or done any cardio work for real in over 2 years and yet my resting HR is around the 50s, my blood pressure sits in the ideal range and so do my hip to waist and waist to height ratios which implies the likelihood that I have arterial plaque build up, heart disease or excess visceral fat build up which would lead to metabolic syndrome and eventually diabetes like my father's if it got bad enough is very, very low. My dad has type-2 diabetes and the dietary difference between him and I is that the oday eats lots of starchy, sugary, processed and seed oil rich foods in conjunction with his processed low quality meats and other animal foods. Those are your culprits, walaal, not animal fat and cholesterol.

-

The Inuit and other such groups don't have these problems either. Any studies you may have heard of claiming they do are extremely deceptive and tested Inuits as a population overall and in a time when they were already eating a more western & processed diet. You'd be surprised the lengths some researchers will go to keep their pet theories and deceive the public. One scientist I know of from many years ago studied about 50 Maasai cadavers and claimed Maasais had a lot of atherosclerosis and that it was caused by their traditional diet and that they avoided keeling over from it due to exercise but guess what? This researcher neglected to mention that he conducted his research in a time when many Maasais were already eating processed modern foods like seed oils, grains and refined sugar and had no way of confirming what any of his cadavers had been eating when they were alive. They pull the same deceptive garbage with groups like the Inuit whenever they try to claim they had health issues.

Just look at the deceptive garbage around the blue zones which are now clearly coming out to have eaten loads of animal foods like the Okinawans always historically gorging on Pork or even the bloody Seventh Day Adventists being big on dairy and Ikarians loving mutton, lamb and caprinae derived dairy:

• Seventh Day Adventists, Sardinians and Costa Ricans
• Ikaria
• Okinawans

The kinds of deceptive things these "researchers" pulled in some cases, wallahi. Like going to parts of Greece during lent and passing that off as their normal diet, lol. Just obscene. Eat the meat, drink the caano, chuck the sugar, starches and seed oils and don't worry, walaalkay. Or do; your choice.

 

[chaehyun]

Hmm...I've never met a lactose intolerant Somali person. I usually see a ton of Asian people who are though. I think they should be up there on the list.

 

[El Nino]

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[tariq moses]

After recently discovering carnivore diet and me studying medicine I have come to conclusion that what caused the heart attack and the diabetes was my fathers bad diet eating huge amounts of carbohydrates and lack of exercise.

Carbs are good for you, some of the blue zones eat very high carb diets, dates, oranges, apples, raw honey, guava, milk and potatoes are all good sources.
We are not carnivores, we're omnivores. Carb intake should be higher than protein intake.

I have decided to change his diet and my moms fully, putting them on a extremely low carb, high protein diet, no starchy vegetables and no tea or coffee. Inshallah this will help them.

Make sure to not get most of the protein from muscle meat, muscle meat contains high amounts of methionine which has been intimately linked to lower life expectancy, rodents fed methionine restricted diets lived 45% longer than their high methinonine consuming counterparts. Better sources of protein are milk, cheese, gelatin and organ meat, consume all with niacinamide.

 

[Keo]

I was lactose intolerant when I was a kid but not anymore

 

[K-M-O]

I am lactose intolerant.

Camel milk doesn’t have a lot of lactose.

I’m not surprised that you are.

 

[mrsretard]

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[El Nino]

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Im still researching but I would suggest cutting anything with a lot of carbohydrates. That would include all grains and rice. Im not doing that yet instead I eat small amounts of rice every day. I eat rice with my meat, either chicken or beef. For breakfast/ supper I eat a tuna or egg sandwich. I also drink a lot milk.

Foods to avoid are fruits and vegetables with a lot of carbohydrates ( potatoes, banana etc ). This one was a surprise for me as I always regarded them as something healthy but they weren’t. Im still a beginner so I would suggest to ask advice from @Shimbiris

 

[J-Rasta]

Not accurate.

 

[Sophisticate]

The vast majority of Mongols are not lactase persistent genetically like Northern Europeans. They're even less lactase persistent than us by a wide margin, last I checked. Yet a fair number of Mongols and even Han Chinese report being able to consume a significant amount of milk without issues. There is evidence in the literature I've seen over the years that populations overtime develop the proper gut microbiome for digesting certain things like the Japanese with seaweed and our ancestors and Mongols with raw milk. If I'm not mistaken, I don't genetically carry many of the markers for lactase persistence yet I can chug a gallon of milk, raw or pasteurized, and feel absolutely normal throughout the day after with no diarrhea or anything like that.

It's the gut microbiome. Somalis who have trouble with dairy are most likely damaged in some way in that respect. Most people are, to be honest. I remember reading how there were so many strains of things like lactobacillus that are heavily depleted in modern people compared to before due to things like SAD type diets, microbiotically compromised mothers and birthing through methods like c-sections. Sad stuff.

Also, another thing to keep in mind is that a lot of pastoralist populations didn't historically just chug raw milk. Our ancestors, including the ancestors of groups like the Mongols, the Maasai and even the Bedouin very often fermented milk into things like yogurt and sourmilks which heavily depleted the lactose and left you with the protein, fat, vitamins, mineral and probiotics.

A lot of the milk was also used to make butter, ghee and in the case of some of these cultural groups cheeses as well. Camel milk was historically pretty much impossible to make cheese from so cheese wasn't much of a thing across the Sahara and for Somali nomads but the rest like sourmilks, yogurts, butter, cream and ghee were very, very common. And one thing all of those things have in common is little to no lactose. If you've left raw milk to ferment for 2-3 days then there's probably only trace amounts of lactose left and almost nobody is THAT sensitive. Same goes for butter, cream and even more so with ghee.

I have the persistence gene. I checked. I was born naturally. But I have been fed the SAD and or an urbanized Somali diet as a child. The gut microbiome can be impacted by a multitude of factors including medical interventions (i.e. antibiotics and inoculations). Food for thought.

I never had issues with dairy perse (no issues gastrointestinal in other words I don't have lactose intolerance). But I do suffer from a mild allergy (environmental) which is quite different (this is in the form of post nasal drip and skin itching after drinking milk). Also what about issues with casein (in milk) which seem biochemically similar to (gluten). I don't consume gluten at all and am better for it. And unlike dairy where I don't have a lactose intolerance issue I have an elevated risk for Celiac. The best thing I ever did was cut all grains out of my diet. As you said, the allergy may be more of an issue of processing rather than an allergy itself, and as I've told you there is no access to raw dairy in Canada (it's barred).

 

[Shimbiris]

Carbs are good for you, some of the blue zones eat very high carb diets, dates, oranges, apples, raw honey, guava, milk and potatoes are all good sources.

Watch this video:



And this too:



It's very arguable that any amount of exogenous carbohydrate is toxic to the human body, especially for modern people who often have low muscle tone and muscle development meaning not a lot gets shuttled into their muscle glycogen (which is useful) and just ends up becoming subcutaneous and visceral fat while also wrecking havoc on their cells and bloodstream. The body does not really need 1 gram over what it produces itself wondering around, especially if you're not a very muscular and athletic person but even then it's not arguably required, you can just handle it less dysfunctionally than other people due to being able to shuttle it off into your muscle glycogen where it can't cause many problems.

It's seemingly only crucial during the first 2-3 years of human development as that doctor above imparts as it helps stimulate growth and the development of your microbiome at that point in a person's life as this study pretty much supports as well and in that case it's in the form of lactose which is equal parts glucose and galactose, the latter of which goes through a 4-step process to breakdown into glucose in the body. Fructose, which is found in fruits, honey and all this processed gunk is inappropriate for the human body. It has pretty much zero use in our bodies and is much more biased than glucose toward ending up as visceral fat which an eventual excess of is literally what in time causes type-2 diabetes and heart-disease which both my father and @El Nino's father have:

Consuming fructose-sweetened, not glucose-sweetened, beverages increases visceral adiposity and lipids and decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight/obese humans - PubMed

Studies in animals have documented that, compared with glucose, dietary fructose induces dyslipidemia and insulin resistance. To assess the relative effects of these dietary sugars during sustained consumption in humans, overweight and obese subjects consumed glucose- or fructose-sweetened...

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Also, the carb intake of the blue zones is greatly exaggerated much like how these deceptive researchers pretty much hid how much animal foods these groups ate in abundance. Most rural Greeks like Ikarians did not eat much carbs at all, man. Just ask them now yourself. Bread was fermented for like 3 days and used very sparingly (like one loaf for several days) with dairy and meat. Okinawans were eating mostly things like Pork and even some plant-based goons openly admit most of the benefits in the Seventh Day Aventists' diet is from the dairy they were consuming. Ironically, it's usually their neighboring groups who eat more starches, fruits and plant-oils like coastal Greeks and Costa Ricans compared to the more inland, mountain folks and those aren't, as far as I know, the ones with the long lifespans or good health outcomes.

And all this "our ancestors ate fruit and honey" stuff people tout online is foolish, wallahi. That stuff, in the case of fruits, wasn't even as sugary as it is now in a lot of cases and in the case of both it was seasonal (not remotely all year or even close to the majority of the year) and groups they like to point to like the Hadza who eat a lot of such things now will openly tell you that they used to eat way more meat in comparison a few generations ago before they got moved onto lower quality land by their government, pastoralists and farmers. All these tubers, fruits and honey are a mark of their destitution.



Not to mention that groups like the Hadza aren't as healthy now and even have documented notable tooth decay unheard of in Paleolithic peoples.

Carb intake should be higher than protein intake.

We are mainly made up of fat and protein once you account for water, not sugar in the least and, yes, we make all of the glucose we need. What would posses anyone to think carbs should outdo protein is beyond me, xawey. Frankly, this absurd fear of protein is why some folks out there fail on ways of eating like strict carnivore and integrate stuff like honey the way that absurd Doctor Paul Saladino who chugs like 200 grams of the stuff daily does. This fear of protein causes all sorts of issues with things like electrolyte balance and satiation:





Electrolyte Problems on a Carnivore Diet? - Harry Serpanos

People screw themselves in the long-term by fearing protein intake. Nothing to fear. All the bullshit "science" around fearing it is just that; bullshit that does not remotely control for a number of confounding factors like the other junk people are eating and how unhealthy they are overall. And, ironically, most of those bluezone groups you mentioned ate a shit ton of protein.

It also intuitively makes no sense and is one of the reasons why I always furrowed my brows at the mainstream Ketogenic crowd. Outside of isolated fats like tallow and butter, most animal foods that are rich in fat are also rich in protein if not sometimes richer in the latter:

• Rib-eye Steak (291g): 63g of Fat & 69g of Protein
• 5-egg Omelette: 35g of Fat & 30g of Protein
• 8 oz Salmon fillet: 28g of Fat & 47g of Protein
• 200g block of Halloumi: 52g of Fat & 48g of Protein

So it's arguably not even natural to be consuming "high fat and moderate protein" like they propose and as the Greek fella in the videos I've shared explains it's appears beneficial to keep fat and protein somewhat comparable for that insulin to glucagon ratio. This lowering of protein (animal protein), if I recall correctly, is why some of the folks in the mainstream ketogenic crowd eventually end up with endocrinal issues as well. You're basically supposed to go in and out of ketosis and a sort of low-grade ketosis through elevated protein consumption and thus gluconeogenesis. You're not supposed to be deep in ketosis all the time, basically. But this doesn't mean requiring carbs as that will just do things like stimulate the randle cycle as well as age and damage you overall in the long-term, increasing issues like inflammation and glycation.


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[Shimbiris]

... continuation of post


All that being said, this carnivorous, omnivorous and herbivorous argument is tedious when I really, really think about it. What most people need to understand is that most animals have some capacity to be opportunistic and eat almost anything. Even Deer will literally love and enjoy meat (no joke) and camels have been shown to chew on bones for the calcium whereas even animals like dogs and cats have some vestigial capacity in their digestive tracts for digesting plant-matter.

It's not really a question of whether you're "carnivorous", "omnivorous" and/or "herbivorous" in the sense that you have the capacity to break down some amount of animal or plant matter and benefit from it or are observed in nature to eat some of both. It is a question of what you can mainly to entirely thrive on as an animal. You can put a wolf on a 100% animal-based diet and it will not only survive but thrive provided the volume is sufficient and you're giving them a variety like fats, viscera, muscles, connective tissue and so on. You can also give a Cow nothing but grasses and clovers and it will not only survive but thrive. Flip this now and give a Wolf nothing but plant matter and a Cow nothing but animal protein and fats. The Wolf will deteriorate quite a bit in the short-term and in the long-term limp along a bit for maybe even years but eventually die of basically nutrient starvation. The cow's death would probably be even quicker as meat is too nutrient dense for herbivores in high and regular amounts and having quite an abundance of it will kill them pretty fast from what I remember.

This is what actually should decide an animal's classification, saaxiib. What they can survive and thrive entirely on. True omnivores like chickens and certain pigs truly do, as far as I know, need both plant and animal foods in order to be at their absolute best though they can do quite well if you heavily swing them in either direction, from what I recall. Hence all the "100% Vegetarian Chickens" you hear about. Humans are not like this at all. There is no evidence that removing plant matter will negatively effect anyone in the long-term or that there are nutrients that can't be found in animal foods. And there is also the glaring fact that whole-foods plant-based diets are extremely unhealthy for humans in the long-term and riddled with all of the following nutrient deficiencies:

If there were not processed and junk vegan foods (industrially produced seed oils, fortified foods, plant protein powder isolates) which do not occur in nature and supplements which also do not occur in nature the dropout rate among vegans would be even higher than the supposed 84% dropout rate you see thrown around and much, much quicker than it already is where some of these people can slowly destroy themselves 5-15 years before becoming far too sick to go on. Just look no further than raw vegans, for example or whole-foods plant-based vegans on YouTube. Do it yourself, bro. Try to live on just vegetables, fruits, lentils, nuts, seeds, grain-based foods and things like leafy greens. No supplements and nothing processed beyond say flour, olive oil and coconut oil or the sorts of things our ancestors have been doing for thousands of years like fermenting the dough, soaking the lentils and cooking. See how great you feel and how long you last.*

And you know what I find really funny about this? Eating in such a way was and is traditionally considered a form of fasting by many Orthodox Christians and many Hindu / generally Desi religious groups. Even pre-modern peoples knew eating nothing but plants was nutrient empty for the most part and a form of starvation.

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In contrast, we have several examples of human cultures throughout history and across the world that ate overwhelmingly or pretty much entirely animal-based while thriving (not one example of a historical "vegan" human culture, though and for good reason). Like I described earlier, a lot of the crap out there claiming the Inuits and Maasai weren't a picture of health is deceptive. Weston A. Price's good work also shows us in great detail how pretty much all surviving and thriving traditional cultures across the world and different climatic zones about a century ago mainly prized animal foods like meat, seafood and dairy:



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[Shimbiris]

... continuation of post


Not to mention that Upper Paleolithic Europeans were often even more carnivorous (high trophic level) in their diet than Neanderthals who were shown to be clearly high-trophic level carnivores and UP Europeans in general were some of the most robust, large crania possessing humans out there:

The Oase 1 human carbon and nitrogen values are plotted with
isotope results from associated faunal remains in Fig. 2. The
human and faunal remains were largely recovered from surface
deposits in the cave, and therefore represent a range of time
periods dating to between 50,000 (wolf, hyena, and red deer)
and 20,000 (ibex) cal BP (43). The herbivore isotope values are
similar, despite their likely range of ages. The highest wolf 15N
value is 11.5‰, which is 8.9‰ higher than the Capra (ibex)
(average 2.6 0.5‰) and 6.1 ‰ higher than the Cervus (red
deer) (average 5.4‰), while a hyena has a value of 11.1‰,
which is 8.5‰ higher than the ibex and 5.7‰ higher than the
deer. As there is an enrichment of between 3 to 5‰ in 15N
between prey and consumer, the wolves and the hyena were
likely obtaining most of their protein from the red deer and not
the ibex at this site. In contrast, Oase 1 has a 15N value (13.3‰)
that is 10.8‰ higher in 15N than the ibex and 8.0‰ higher than
the red deer. The enrichment between both herbivores and Oase
1 is far beyond the 3 to 5‰ trophic level effect in 15N. The Oase
I 15N value is also above those of the hyena (11.1‰), and the
highest wolf value (11.5‰) from the same site and dating to
about the same time. Therefore, Oase 1 must have obtained a
significant portion of its protein from a different ecosystem, for
which the best candidate is freshwater fish.

The other early modern humans all have 13C values –18.5‰
(see Fig. 1 and Table S2), which indicate that their protein came
from terrestrial C3 (or freshwater) foods, yet many of them have
high 15N values, at or above the highest Neanderthal values

https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.0903821106

Look at how nearly all the humans up there appear even more high-trophic level (carnivorous) in their diet than Neanderthals while Oase-1 is more separated from the herbivorous animals than Canids, Hyenas and Neanderthals are. Whether the explanation is that they ate lots of seafood or even carnivorous animals along with the land mammals or putrefied meat, they didn't get up there through munching on loads of plants, that's for sure. They didn't even find evidence that they were eating much in the way of things like hazelnuts that were readily available:

There are high-protein plant foods in Europe that Neanderthals and early modern humans could have consumed, such as hazelnuts [commonly consumed in the Mesolithic (49)] that would have been visible in the isotopic analyses, but they are simply not seen.

The same sort of thing goes for Upper Paleolithic Siberian Hunter-Gatherers and HGs in Eastern Europe:

The Paleolithic diet of Siberia and Eastern Europe: evidence based on stable isotopes (δC and δN) in hominin and animal bone collagen | Request PDF

Request PDF | The Paleolithic diet of Siberia and Eastern Europe: evidence based on stable isotopes (δC and δN) in hominin and animal bone collagen | We present an analysis and interpretation of current knowledge on Paleolithic diet in Siberia and Eastern Europe, based on C and N stable...

www.researchgate.net

Observe how high they are on average compared to carnivorous animals like Lions and Wolves. And once again these are some of the most robust Humans in the archaeological record as I'm sure you know. Keep in mind as well that Europe/Siberia or no, these are the same Anatomically Modern Humans as you and me, there is no evidence of notable differences in digestive tracts between us and them that we know of.

Even in the Mediterranean's Paleolithic era they find via isotopic data that they ate overwhelmingly animal foods:

Carbon and nitrogen isotope analyses show that the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherers of Favignana consumed almost exclusively protein from terrestrial game and that there was only a slight increase in marine food consumption from the late Pleistocene to the early Holocene.

(PDF) Origin and Diet of the Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers on the Mediterranean Island of Favignana (Ègadi Islands, Sicily)

PDF | Hunter-gatherers living in Europe during the transition from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene intensified food acquisition by broadening the... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Here is some data on Africa as well:

Reconstruction of African human diet using bone collagen carbon and nitrogen isotope ratios - Nature

Behavioural modifications associated with the exploitation of new food resources have been linked to major steps in hominid evolution and in subsequent human cultural development1,2. Testing of specific hypotheses concerning the influence of dietary change on these processes would be facilitated...

www.nature.com

Notice how virtually all the human groups, other than some of the Bantus who have iron-age farming cultures, are at a higher trophic level than carnivores. Even our own Savanna Pastoral Neolithic, Cushitic-speaking kin who were known to collect and grind down grains were clearly consuming a crap-ton of animal matter over plants. And notice the right-leaning bias as well, especially among the pre-historic groups:

The δN values of the pastoral populations are significantly higher than those of the East African Carnivores (Fig.1). This unexpected results suggests that the former populations consumed resources having δN values higher than those eaten by the carnivores. Milk and blood appear to be enriched in δN relative to the flesh of animals, which could account for this observation.

source

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[Shimbiris]

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One other thing to keep in mind is that wild aquatic animals are often more high in protein than fat. And, as you can see above, and everything else I've seen from Europe, to Africa, to Australia to the Americas, mainland East Asia and Japan, the isotopic data always, except for rare exceptions like proto-agricultural communities such as some Swanport pre-historic Australians, has humans being either comparable to carnivores or even significantly above them in terms of trophic level even when eating a notable amount of plants and a very common explanation for this the researchers give, which seems sensible, is that it was due at least in part to heavy aquatic animal consumption alongside terrestrial mammal consumption across the board. Putrefied meat may have played some role but, mostly, it seems our predecessors' fixation with fresh and salt water fish right down to the carnivorous ones alongside marine mammals is what gave them an edge over terrestrial carnivores and carnivorous homo relatives like Neanderthals who have been documented to be high-trophic level carnivores but who seem to have mostly focused on terrestrial animals:

• 8 oz Salmon: 28g of Fat & 47g of Protein
• 8 oz Yellofin Tuna steak: 1g of Fat & 56g of Protein
• 8 oz Grouper: 2.9g of Fat & 56.5g of Protein
• 8 oz Carp: 16.3g of Fat & 50.7g of Protein

Even crustaceans as well as marine mammals are often strongly biased toward protein compared to fat. Now, to be fair, some do try to argue that there were other reasons for the high-trophic level like the consumption of putrefied meat or eating both herbivores and carnivores but whatever the case a lot of animal protein was clearly consumed. If high protein in and of itself was really a problem we would not exist as a species. Our HG and also pastoralist ancestors would have poisoned themselves out of the gene pool long ago.

Yet even not as well-fed modern HGs, once you do control for infant mortality, lived usually about as long as modern people. They were also usually notably taller than farmers of the Neolithic and post-Neolithic eras:

​

One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors. (source)​

Keep in mind that the "Neolithic" Corded Ware Culture are actually pastoralists and an extension of the Yamnaya Bronze-Age culture that brought Indo-European to Europe from the Steppes and that the later you go into the Upper Paleolithic the more Humans begin to be less and less carnivorous due to shortages in animals until, in some regions of the world, they discover plant and animal domestication out of necessity (source)

Even proto-agricultural Hunter-Gatherers like Natufians who were eating a fair amount of plant-matter are somewhat noticeably taller, especially in regards to the females, than their Neolithic descendants (source)
​

They also had, as is commonly known, more robust bodies/skeletons, larger crania, straighter teeth and stronger profiles, and lacked issues like tooth decay (unless you're looking at late Paleolithic groups that were starting to eat more plants) to a degree so high on average that many anthropologists identify post-paleolithic remains through the presence of things like tooth decay and will publish work like this:

The results indicated that dietary habits changed over the course of the Neolithic period: the prevalence of caries significantly decreased between the Early and Late Neolithic. The adults from the Early Neolithic sample, particularly those from the LBK bore the highest rate of caries. This highlights the essential importance of cereals in the diet of the early farmers in the Middle Elbe-Saale region. As time went on, meat and dairy products became more and more important, which had a positive impact on dental health. (source)​

We only started matching and surpassing things like HG heights in the modern era. Before that only some agricultural elites and some pastoralists could do that by the looks of it. And even to this day we lack the level of robusticity they had in terms of skeletal structure.

The Tianyuan man from 40,000 years ago who occupies a basal genetic position to all East-Eurasians like East Asians and Australian Aborigines also sat at higher up in the food-chain (higher trophic level) than terrestrial carnivores and ate a lot of animal protein, a good chunk of it, as the researchers posit, seemingly from aquatic animals​

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[Shimbiris]

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We are not truly "omnivores", saaxiib. More able to get some nutrition from plants than ferrets, lions, cats and dogs? Yes. Especially because of how clever we are with all the external fermentation, powdering, grinding down and cooking? Yes. Historically used plants as side, fallback and survival foods especially when animals weren't as abundant and for medicinal uses? Yes. Like Chickens and Pigs? Hell no. Chickens literally have an organ for breaking down things like grains in their raw state unlike us. Do you have a gizzard? Our digestive tract looks more like a dog's than any of the animals illustrated below and contrary to what the study this illustration comes from claims cooking and other modes of historically processing foods mainly seem to have benefitted us with plant foods in helping reduce antinutrients and phytotoxins:

(PDF) COMPARATIVE GUT PHYSIOLOGY SYMPOSIUM: Comparative physiology of digestion

PDF | The digestive systems of all species have been shaped by environmental pressures over long evolutionary time spans. Nevertheless, all digestive... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Contrary to common belief, the nutrient differences between cooked and raw meats are not all that insane at all and can sometimes be something of a toss up depending on the nutrient if you do googling for a while beyond the study I've shared below where certain cooking methods and durations will make some of nutrients significantly less available to us like this study shows with iron or this source shows with B-vitamins:

(PDF) The nutrient composition of South African mutton

PDF | Dorper and Mutton Merino carcasses of the C age group with a fat code 2 (±7% SCF) from three main production areas (Karoo, Kalahari and Ermelo) in... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

www.researchgate.net

Yes, cooking makes meat easier to chew but this can easily be circumvented by cutting meat up into smaller bite-sized pieces like with steak tartare and there's evidence of early HGs eating not simply raw but likely even putrefied meat and many late holocene HGs and pastoralists show some notable degree of raw meat consumption. Cooking does have its downsides regardless of methods like the depletion of nutrients such as vitamin C, thiamine and taurine. Taurine can sometimes be so depleted in cooked meat that carnivores like cats suffer on a cooked meat and pasteurized dairy diet and despite us humans producing our own taurine it is arguable we'd benefit from an exogenous supply for things like gut health and electrolyte balance along with a number of other things. I also get the sense you will likely internally scream "Anecdotes!" but it ought to be food for thought that there are many long-term exclusively raw meat eaters and they are clearly not underweight and malnourished like long-term whole-foods plant-based and raw vegan types.

And again, something to keep in mind is that there is evidence of humans eating not simply raw meat but putrefied/rotted/fermented meat historically:

https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/53085000/2017_Speth_Putrid_Meat_and_Fish_in_the_Eurasian_Middle_and_Upper_Paleolithic-with-cover-page-v2.pdf?Expires=1650155029&Signature=Itk6J3NtT3vEZ5VTbcRJfOT3Qq9PfIcg7oSddNeS2SKafbV8hjf0AI4mW676XIuFMttfFSsM40N7EsJFS-wVhDdpDv800Z~FQK30RfxIHTev-TK2JwJMVjDrz17QUGw1PtRyyng75eOqwLXKK~iCCodfVGuq0YDM~PPl6PFwc4j~whx4u1AnQw8iVmnPQ3M0tnhGjKWHey1JdA1LMqmsJs1vjJCInr8pnPQTFIxmYNf5pikAOM9UdJrMI~L7I~-l0kqUn-nxeXPrQHXh~sztaiVQATpq2j5~Y-2T6t4wTqPWA8yOS04hR3M2VUM5--N~usg~-ndYVjuaFZspzbslhw__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA

It's not just in Eurasia as that paper points out itself but in other parts of the world like Africa as well. As crazy as this sounds it actually makes good sense that humans can do well on such a way of eating because if you believe in our evolution from Chimpanzee-like animals then a common hypothesis among scholars like Anthropologists is that we started out first as scavengers when we moved from forests to savannahs which connects well with how our stomach acidity is comparable to that of scavengers.

Our move onto the grasslands is theoretically what eventually pressured us to become more and more human. Bipedalism was more beneficial on the grasslands and you were not going to survive on grasses, a few nuts and seeds and barely available (especially all year) fruits and honey so our ancestors got to scavenging off the kills of better predators and hunting overtime as well. Greater tool use and construction, and more complex communication (language) became selected for as it benefited hunting and our ancestors became more cooperative and less nasty toward one another overall. This all encouraged what they call the "Expensive Tissue Hypothesis" where we traded larger more complex guts with all the right microbes to properly ferment plant foods for bigger brains useful for being hunters and trappers through the nutrient density of animal foods like meat:







Go back above and look at how long and complex herbivorous and omnivorous guts are compared to ours. You often need more alkaline stomachs, definitely much longer digestive tracts and in the case of herbivores even more than one stomach to really properly breakdown plants with your microbiome. We have none of that and have a stomach PH comparable to scavengers. Most of the fiber people eat just seems to clog them up (contrary to popular wisdom) and gets pooped out with only some getting actually broken down and used for things like short-chain fatty acids as we do have some vestigial microbial ability to breakdown plant matter in our guts.

I'd also read this paper from some Israeli researchers that's basically a large review of things like the stable isotopic data and it shows that for much of our evolutionary history humans were effectively carnivores contrary to all the pretentious stuff out there that tries to "debunk" paleo and act like we were even more plant eating than previously reported:



We seem to have become more and more plant-eating over time like during the later part of the Upper Paleolithic until we discovered agriculture in various parts of the world. One thing to realize is that greater plant-eating effectively looks like a result of our destitution in animal resources after events like the last glacial maximum. When animals were abundant, like you see with that case in Europe, Humans seemingly wouldn't even bother with various plant-foods even when they were available like with those nuts and seeds.

All that having been said, there's a lot more to add and clarify but the bottom-line is that animal foods are where it's at and always have been and there is no honest requirement for plants or carbs. If you like the taste and they don't do much to you then very well do have them to some extent but I'd always prioritize animal foods, protein and fat. Though most people don't realize how many of the little kinks about themselves they think are "normal" are not and are caused by consumption of such foods and I'd personally experiment for several months to even over a year to see. But, all in all, you do you, xawey. I won't argue with you or anyone on this. Debates are a waste of time and I have a life to live as I'm sure you do too. Just throwing my little more than two cents in ().