So you think a gorilla’s vegetarian diet is low fat? How about a cow?
In this video Dr. Barry Groves explains why all mammals require mostly fat to survive. And you’ll see why a pure vegetarian/vegan diet for humans can be devastating to one’s health. If you have a friend or family member who is considering going vegan, implore them to watch this video. (Note: You might need earphones or an external speaker if you’re using a lap top. The sound is very poor.)
Dr. Groves book Trick and Treat is an excellent treatise on how humans should eat based on our “design.” What I find most interesting is that he points out that all humans are, well, humans and do not require different types of foods or diets. We are not all unique. This is something I have been saying to my clients for years and it’s great to hear someone of Dr. Groves caliber confirming this with hard data.
Dr. Loren Cordain author of The Paleo Diet wrote an excellent piece on the myths of eating for your blood type – a concept popularized by Peter D’Adamo. Here is an excerpt:
So Peter has got all of his blood group origins messed up, his dates wrong, and the evolutionary splits incorrect. Why does this matter and how does it affect his dietary theories? To begin with, even if we were to believe in Peter’s underlying assumptions that diets should be prescribed upon blood types, he would have to completely revamp his original recommendations. Type A’s should be eating a high protein, meat-based diet rather than the vegetarian fare he suggests. But what about type O’s? With the correct evolutionary information, should they now be eating a vegetarian menu? And what about type B’s and type AB’s – what should they now be eating? Most telling of the logical failings of Peter’s blood type diet is the observation that all four of the major blood types had evolved almost 250,000 years before the coming of the Agricultural Revolution 10,000 years ago. Yet Peter would have us convinced that three of the four major blood groups only came into existence slightly before or after the Agricultural Revolution, and as a direct result from dietary selective pressures wrought by Neolithic food introductions.
Dr. Cordain explains that the reason so many people do well using Dr. D’Adamo’s ideas is that about 60% of the people who pick up Dr. D’Adamo’s book remove wheat and other grains from their diet as well as a lot of junk “foods.” So the eat right for your blood type diet does not work for the reasons people think it does. The same goes for Dr. Dean Ornish’s severely low fat diet. People who adopt Dr. Ornish’s brand usually stop eating all the garbage they were eating before, start eating real foods and their health improves. But not necessarily because of the veggies and low fat fare. That’s faulty logic.
Research and anthropological facts presented in Dr. Groves presentation shout out loud and clear that all humans would be healthier if they increased their fat intake mainly from animal origin and decreased the amount of carbohydrates mainly from refined sources.
We know that saturated fats are not the cause of heart disease and never were. And we now know that the bad fats are trans fats as well as the fats made from seeds and vegetables. Sally Fallon, President of the Weston A. Price Foundation discusses this issue as well as how biased the USDA is when determining our dietary guidelines on Robert Su M.D.’s podcast. It’s a real eye-opener folks.
So remember – you are not necessarily what you eat. To quote Dr. Jeff Volek:
You are what your body does with what you eat.
And so is every other animal on this wonderful earth.
Fat is the most valuable food known to man. –Dr. John Yudkin
