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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Mon Feb 20, 2017 10:40 pm
by Ego
7Wannabe5 wrote:But, but, but...

...the problem with targeting sugar as the root cause of all afflictions, and the relatively recent epidemic of diabesity is that humans have always eaten a good deal of sugar.
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https://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/ ... rcent.html

These numbers represent added sweeteners such as cane sugar, high-fructose corn syrup and maple syrup, but not naturally occurring sugars in fruit and vegetables.

Wrap your brain around this: in 1822, we ate the amount of added sugar in one 12 ounce can of soda every five days, while today we eat that much sugar every seven hours.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 10:30 am
by 7Wannabe5
@BRUTE: I believe that what the study to which you are referring actually revealed was although members of modern hunter-gatherer group did exert themselves much more than average modern human, rough equivalent of walking 8 miles/day, their resting metabolism rates were so low that their overall metabolic burn was the same as an average modern human. Therefore, this actually shows an even more profound difference in the way they functioned. Also, they did consume a good proportion of their calories in the form of carbohydrate calories from tubers, honey and fruit.

@Ego: The chart you posted showing history of sugar consumption/person in the US would be quite stunning if it was likely that it was based on anything resembling relevant or accurate data. Do you really think the Department of Commerce kept accurate records of all the foraged, home produced and locally traded sugar foods in the 19th century? What the graph more likely reveals is something closer to the amount of commercially produced sugar products each person in the US purchased for consumption (on average) during that era when approximately 90% of all foodstuffs were home produced and never to be found for sale on a large, tax or tariff-subject, market. Here are some excerpts from the memoir (not damn lying statistic ;) ) of pioneer boy in wilderness of 1836 located less than 15 miles from where I currently attempt perma-culture project.

We made troughs, tapped hard maples on each side of the creek; took our oxen, sled and
two barrels (as the trees were scattered) to draw the sap to the place we had prepared for
boiling it.
Now I had an employment entirely new to me: boiling down sap and making sugar, in
the woods of Michigan. This was quite a help to us in getting along. We made our own
“sweet” and vinegar, also some sugar and molasses to sell. Some springs, we made three
or four hundred pounds of sugar...

We also secured some more very nice honey. Father said, judging from the amount we got, he should think the
tree contained at least a hundred pounds of good honey, and I should think so too. And
he said “This truly is a goodly land; it flows with milk and honey.” He also said, “I will make
a barrel of metheglin, which will be a very delicious drink for my family and a kind of a
substitute for the luxuries they left behind. It will slake the thirst of the friendly pioneers,
who may favor us with a call in our new forest home; or those friends who come to talk
over the adventures of days now past, and the prospects of better days to come.”

-"The Bark-Covered House"- William Nowlin
Since I taught myself to cook when I was quite young from a random collection of cookbooks, some of which were fairly archaic, including an older edition of this one https://www.amazon.com/UNITED-STATES-RE ... B000BRPEOOI have continuously been confused whenever somebody suggests that sugar, meat or grain foods in the diet is the cause of the much more recent epidemic of obesity. The oldest cookbooks in my collection of Americana,dating well back into the 19th century, all have entire chapters devoted to making candy, cakes and pies, as well as processing rhubarb, rendering carp edible, and pickling cabbage. When I was an 11 year old at Girl Scout Camp celebrating the Bicentennial we churned full fat butter and pulled taffy.

What I see as having really changed in the course of my lifetime during which the obesity epidemic started and has flourished, is that people eat more food at all times of the day, a very different combination of more and less variety typified by something like a Spicy Chik'n Sandwich, they do not sit down and eat at the table like civilized people, children do not run around outdoors as much, fewer people are employed in manual labor, adults drink and smoke less and eat more treats more often, the feminist/acceptance movements combined with invention of stretchy plastics in clothing resulting in adults now dressing for the symphony like toddlers used to dress for bedtime have led to overall decrease in vanity. What else?

Anyways, I would say the tenets of my own "food religion/science" would be that human beings are naturally omnivorous scavengers, and can thrive on a variety of diets, and the individuals most likely to suffer from nutritional based illness or syndrome are those who avoid variety of whole foods, and are sedentary in proportion to rate of consumption. Since I believe that people should eat fresh food in season when possible, I also believe that people should eat as much locally produced food as possible, because there is great unnecessary expense involved in transporting, storing and marketing food produced to be sold as fresh at a distance. Therefore, it makes sense for somebody who lives in Southern California to eat a diet not unlike that of somebody who lives in region of Asia found at similar latitude, just like it makes sense for somebody who lives in Michigan to eat a diet more like somebody who lives in the Ukraine or North Korea. Since the cold winters of my latitude result in a hunger gap, (the oxen of the pioneer family in my region at something they called "French bog" that grew in low-spots and stayed green all winter, I wonder what is was?) food must be preserved in some manner, and it is my belief that it would be "better" to eat raspberries I grew or gathered and made into preserves with local honey in January than grapefruits shipped from Florida.

Since people benefit from an active lifestyle and there is some amount of manual labor involved in foraging, gathering, hunting, scavenging, planting, tending, raising, harvesting, processing food-stuffs, I think the first rational step towards the eradication of the obesity epidemic would be for all people to exert themselves for approximately 2 to 4 hours per day in local-as-possible personal food production. I defy anybody to achieve a level of morbid obesity eating cookies they baked from scratch in a wood oven for which they chopped the fuel, fashioned from ingredients such as maple sugar they walked into the woods to tap themselves, carried in buckets to boil down on more wood they chopped themselves, flour from grain they grew, threshed, ground themselves, and butter they churned from a cow they had to track down in the evening across field and woods by sound of her bell.

Of course, I must admit that I do not even come close to approximating this ideal solution I suggested in my own current behavior. -lol (typed from 12th floor suite of hotel where I very recently consumed free unnaturally varied breakfast from buffet.)

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 1:43 pm
by Smashter
BRUTE wrote:too bad studies have also shown that thin, healthy hunter gatherer tribes exert themselves a great deal LESS than most modern humans. they just sit around and do nothing.
Huh?

http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod ... -gatherers

"It all adds up to about 135 minutes per day of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Contrast that to the current recommendations from the U.S. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of at least 150 minutes per week."

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 4:54 pm
by 7Wannabe5
@Smashter: Interesting link. Almost perfectly correlates with the behavior of the pioneer family in 1835, and my own, much more limited experience with pretending to be a subsistence farmer with few motorized tools or scavenger/forager. If you walk around 4 miles of alleys looking for useful refuse, and then spend another solid hour or two hauling around water and wood chips in a wagon, and have nothing but a giant bowl of black currants for your lunch, you probably won't die from eating some pancakes and bacon for your dinner.

Aggressive gardening was suggested as one possible activity in the article you linked which I also highly recommend, but I think what I refer to as "scavenge walking" is another good choice which also lends itself to frugality, improvement of environment and mental acuity. The way I do it is that I have to dress appropriately for whatever weather, and bring some bags/pack or a cart, and something on which to take notes. Then I have to go out scavenging for at least an hour or two, and I have to find at least 10 useful things, some of which may be information. Then I MUST process/upcycle the 10 things I found up at least one level that same day. (This last rule is to avoid becoming a dirty hoarder.) This activity can and should be performed in all sorts of environments from upscale urban hotel district to rural Georgia campground to middle-class suburban neighborhood. Traveling part of the distance by bike is okay, or even taking a bus to new starting point. It is WAAAAAY!!!!! more fun than going to some stupid gym or running around in circles on a track.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 7:38 pm
by 7Wannabe5
The frugal housewife, or Complete woman cook. Wherein the art of dressing all sorts of viands, with cleanliness, decency, and elegance, is explained in five hundred approved receipts ... to which are prefixed various bills of fare, for dinners and suppers in every month of the year; and a copious index to the whole. / By Susannah Carter, of Clerkenwell.
Carter, Susannah., Revere, Paul, 1735-1818, engraver.
[Boston]: London. Printed for F. Newbery, at the corner of St. Paul's Church-Yard. Boston: re-printed and sold by Edes and Gill, in QueenStreet., [1772]

http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/te ... 3.0001.001

A BILL of FARE, for every Month in the Year.
In JANUARY.
Dinner.

BEEF-SOUP, made of brisket of beef; and the beef served up in the dish. Turkey and chin• roasted, with gravy and onion sauce; minced pies.

Or,

Achb•ne of beef boiled and carrots and savoys, with melted butter; ham, and fowls roasted, with rich gravy; tarts.

Or,

Vermicelli soup, fore quarter of lamb and sallad in season; fresh salmon, a sufficient quantity boiled, with smelts fried, and lobster sauce; minced pies.
Supper.

Chickens fricaseed; wild ducks with rich gravy sauce; piece of sturgeon or brawn, and minced pies.

Or,

A hare with a pudding in its belly, and strong gravy and claret sauce; ben turkey boiled and oyster sauce, and onion sauce; brawn, and minced pies.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Wed Feb 22, 2017 9:22 pm
by halfmoon
7Wannabe5 wrote: Aggressive gardening was suggested as one possible activity in the article you linked which I also highly recommend, but I think what I refer to as "scavenge walking" is another good choice which also lends itself to frugality, improvement of environment and mental acuity. The way I do it is that I have to dress appropriately for whatever weather, and bring some bags/pack or a cart, and something on which to take notes. Then I have to go out scavenging for at least an hour or two, and I have to find at least 10 useful things, some of which may be information.
If you lived in Seattle, I'm pretty sure I would have handed you some cash on the street. :D

Seriously, I'm very inspired by your posts. I hugely respect your adaptation and survival skills (this is aside from appreciation for your quirky analysis, which I won't address for fear of being stalker-level fan).

I do have to ask, though: what is 'ben turkey'? I tried googling it and just came up with a bunch of Ben Franklin references.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 7:28 am
by EMJ
'ben turkey'
isn't that hen turkey?

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 8:16 am
by 7Wannabe5
@halfmoon: lol- One time when I was a bit disheveled, because walking home after water aerobics class, a kid pulled up in front of me on his bike and offered to sell me some Xanax, but it only took him about 3 seconds after making eye contact, to realize his error and blurt out "Oh, you're straight, aren't you? Don't tell the cops." and zip quickly away. I've also been mistaken for a prostitute when approached from behind. However, the vast majority of people I encounter quickly peg me as some variety of middle-class, middle-aged, sober-and-not-mentally-ill Mumsy environmentalist-social-worker-do-gooder, like a slightly updated version of one of the characters in "Call the Midwife." Since I spend a certain amount of my time engaged in activities such as teaching 6 year old children recently immigrated from Yemen how to sing "Where is Thumbkin?" and planting heritage apricots, this stereo-typing is possibly not entirely undeserved (sigh.) One day last summer when I was parking my bike, which has a woven basket in front and a hauling cart attached behind, at the rack in front of the Dollar Tree, an ancient woman who was walking with a cane, squinted her eyes at me and said "You must be Canadian."

The internet clearly can not be trusted to preserve all knowledge once known to humans. That is why I have set aside a portion of my remaining life energy to the conservation of printed works on the subject of lost arts and crafts. I do not know for certain what a "ben turkey" (the original printing clearly indicated "ben" not "hen") might be, but since "ben" referred to an inner room in a cottage, maybe it refers to some inner portion of a turkey. It might also be derived from biblical language root of "bin" meaning son, so "young male" turkey.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 9:06 am
by halfmoon
7Wannabe5 wrote:One day last summer when I was parking my bike, which has a woven basket in front and a hauling cart attached behind, at the rack in front of the Dollar Tree, an ancient woman who was walking with a cane, squinted her eyes at me and said "You must be Canadian."
This made me laugh immoderately.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 6:49 pm
by Farm_or
Minced pie. Must have been commonplace for that generation.

My mother likes to tell the story of her mother's minced meat pie. My grandmother came from the sticks and grew up in the great depression so their version of minced meat pie was something rancid by our standards.

My father coming from the Basque country and growing up in similar hardship conditions thought himself to stomach anything. My mother warned him aside, "don't eat the minced pie." But my father wanted to make a good first impression.

"Yech!" Is how he describes it now, but he choked it down with a smile back then

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:29 pm
by halfmoon
My family called it mincemeat (small variation), but my grandmother's version actually featured meat as opposed to the stuff you buy off the shelf now that's all candied fruit and...whatever. I'm not sure whether the mincemeat was beef or pork; since my grandmother was Pennsylvania Dutch (German), I'm guessing pork. She mixed up her recipe and canned it every year.

Did your family make shoo-fly pie? This was a concoction of molasses and lard (probably some other ingredients) in an pie shell. I've always thought of it as a Pennsylvania thing, because you could buy them everywhere when I grew up.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:45 pm
by Dragline
halfmoon wrote: Seriously, I'm very inspired by your posts. I hugely respect your adaptation and survival skills (this is aside from appreciation for your quirky analysis, which I won't address for fear of being stalker-level fan).
And another ERE friendship takes root. +1

I enjoy learning about the experiences and perspectives of you both. The series will be called "The Avant Garde and the Beautiful."

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 10:59 am
by 7Wannabe5
@Dragline and halfmoon: I very much enjoy your contributions to the forum also.

@To Whom It May Concern: Ego and BRUTE :

After continued frenzied reading of some of the most popular books of the 19th century, such as "Ishmael; or In the Depths" by Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth (a page-turner of moral victory over poverty and false accusations of shameful circumstances of birth inclusive of detailed description of dietary habits of residents of rural Maryland and Washington D.C. circa 1830-1870) and assorted superficial research on the history of foodstuffs, the science of human metabolism and viewing several horrifying episodes of "Supersize vs. Super-skinny", I have swung my pendulum back towards "SUGAR IS EVIL!" with caveat.

First, I must admit that as soon as I assigned likelihood of inaccuracy and bias in the above-posted report/chart prepared by Modern Whole Foods advocate, I recalled that the human body is a complex system, so the huge difference in sugar consumption in the report/chart would not even be necessary to result in grave effects, especially when considered over a population.
And yet there was no stopping the boom. Sugar was the oil of its day. The more you tasted, the more you wanted. In 1700 the average Englishman consumed 4 pounds a year. In 1800 the common man ate 18 pounds of sugar. In 1870 that same sweet-toothed bloke was eating 47 pounds annually. Was he satisfied? Of course not! By 1900 he was up to 100 pounds a year. In that span of 30 years, world production of cane and beet sugar exploded from 2.8 million tons a year to 13 million plus. Today the average American consumes 77 pounds of added sugar annually, or more than 22 teaspoons of added sugar a day.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/ ... cohen-text

The fact revealed in this paragraph, that the average Englishman in 1900 ate 100 lbs. of sugar/year, whereas a modern American "only" eats 77 lbs./year is what was previously driving my disbelief. Now it all starts to make better sense. My caveat has to do with this part of the article:
Then one day that ape, with its mutant gene and healthy craving for rare, precious fruit sugar, returned to its home in Africa and begot the apes we see today, including the one that has spread its sugar-loving progeny across the globe. “The mutation was such a powerful survival factor that only animals that had it survived,” Johnson said, “so today all apes have that mutation, including humans. It got our ancestors through the lean years. But when sugar hit the West in a big way, we had a big problem. Our world is flooded with fructose, but our bodies have evolved to get by on very, very little of it.”
It neglects to mention the fact that the primary mechanism through which efficient storage of sugar calories as fat aided in the survival of the human species was storage of fat on the hips of human females leading to increased survival of infants. Until very, very recently infant mortality was absolutely number one with a bullet arena for survival-towards-transmission of genetic tendencies in humans (NOT adult males fighting like sabre-tooth tigers or stallions for foodstuffs or females or monopolistic dominance of some realm of capitalism :roll: ) Humans who naturally (due to hormone levels) tend towards being built more like monkeys (narrow hips, powerful upper bodies) tend towards developing metabolic syndrome at relatively lower BMI and/or body-fat-percentage than humans who tend towards being built like Iskra Lawrence. For instance, a tall curvy female of Russian/Polish/Anglo/Irish (cold lands) heritage who is still pre-menopausal, such as myself, can carry up to 40 extra lbs.!!! while maintaining extremely healthy sugar-ingestion tolerance, blood cholesterol, and blood pressure results (although perhaps simultaneously hovering on edge of desire to be seen on public beach in bathing attire.)

Anyways, what I find most interesting about all of this in terms of systems theory, is the different levels on which the concept of "efficiency" comes into play. Sugar Cane is the most efficient processor of CO2 into kilo-calories and the human brain is probably the most efficient processor of glucose into storage-of-information. Two of our biggest problems right now have to do with dealing with the toxic waste products resulting from marginally too much burning of Sucrose and Petroleum, and this is not unrelated to the greatly increased survival rate of human infants over the last 200 years. From a very simplistic perma-culture perspective, the solution would be for humans to choose to favor trees and shrubs (relatively inefficient processors of CO2) over grasses, even though much of the food produced by trees and shrubs (fruit) is relatively high in fructose, and meat from animals that can forage in relatively wooded environment over animals that tend towards heavy grass diet. IOW, I would posit that moderate solution along the lines of substituting roughly half of corn-syrup/sugar-cane intake (by mass) for fresh fruit and half of beef/pork intake for fish/venison/nuts might prove sufficient. Dunno.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 9:42 pm
by halfmoon
7Wannabe5 wrote:It neglects to mention the fact that the primary mechanism through which efficient storage of sugar calories as fat aided in the survival of the human species was storage of fat on the hips of human females leading to increased survival of infants.
@7Wb5, can you link or quote something about this? My utterly uneducated belief was always that pelvic width alone allowed for more successful childbirth, but I'm pretty sure pelvic width doesn't equal storage of hip fat any more than successful childbirth equals infant survival. I tried googling the subject without finding anything useful (see your warning about not all wisdom being online ;) ).

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Mon Feb 27, 2017 9:57 pm
by BRUTE
7Wannabe5 wrote:Sugar Cane is the most efficient processor of CO2 into kilo-calories and the human brain is probably the most efficient processor of glucose into storage-of-information.
brute would consider this lying with facts. while (presumably, brute hasn't checked the numbers) true, is CO2 really the bottleneck? are kilo-calories really the goal? is using glucose the only way to store information?

other facts:
- the human brain is the most efficient processor of ketone bodies (made from body and dietary fats) into storage of information
- ruminant-grass-systems are the most efficient processor of sunlight into kilo-calories if the bottleneck is human effort, not global CO2

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 12:24 am
by 7Wannabe5
@halfmoon: It's not correlated with maternal survival at childbirth except in cases where central body obesity of mother is correlated with gestational diabetes leading to overly high birth weight of infant. Gluteofemoral fat is accumulated and metabolized through entirely different mechanisms than central body visceral fat. Omega-3 fat and glucose are the primary nutritional elements that are able to penetrate the blood brain barrier. Human females store DHA in gluteofemoral fat stores and this particularly aids in the development of the nervous system of infants during pregnancy and breast-feeding. This is why females with low waist-to-hip ratios have higher IQ offspring, particularly first-born offspring. A simplistic way to look at it is that hip and thigh fat on human females is more like the Omega 3 rich fat found in fish such as salmon whereas visceral central body fat stores is more like the Omega 6 fat found in corn oil margarine. As any curvy female knows, thigh and buttock fat is much more resistant to thermogenic mass loss (diet/aerobic exercise), because it is meant to be reserved for infant brain development. Females (and all males) who tend towards "apple" shape lose mass more rapidly through diet and exercise, but they also suffer more ill effects from metabolic syndrome at relatively lower BMI due to the inert-towards protective effect of gluteofemoral stores. Heart disease and other metabolic syndromes in females are strongly correlated with weight gain in the 10 years following menopause, because this is the period during which females, due to lowered levels of estrogen, start to accumulate more visceral fat. This is why each year menopause (complete cessation of menstruation for 12 months) is delayed past average of 51 is correlated with average of 1.8 years of increase in longevity. This is why I personally believe (based on much, much sketchier evidence) that purposeful choice to continue to engage in regular vigorous sexual activity during peri-menopause can contribute to increased longevity in females due to hormonal influence of exposure to androgens/pheromones of male partners and/or orgasm and/or circular feedback mechanism related to correlation of estrogen levels to vaginal lubrication.

http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v1 ... bal=remove

http://www.zmescience.com/medicine/babi ... -20012015/

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Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:06 am
by 7Wannabe5
I said:
Sugar Cane is the most efficient processor of CO2 into kilo-calories and the human brain is probably the most efficient processor of glucose into storage-of-information.
brute : would consider this lying with facts. while (presumably, brute hasn't checked the numbers) true, is CO2 really the bottleneck? are kilo-calories really the goal? is using glucose the only way to store information?

other facts:
- the human brain is the most efficient processor of ketone bodies (made from body and dietary fats) into storage of information
- ruminant-grass-systems are the most efficient processor of sunlight into kilo-calories if the bottleneck is human effort, not global CO2
I don't think we are in complete disagreement. Grasses evolved and thrived during a period when the Earth's atmosphere was relatively low in CO2. Trees and shrubs require, and therefore process, relatively more CO2 per acre of coverage. IOW, an acre of rain forest cut down and covered with cement is not equivalent to an acre of grassland cut down and covered with cement. OTOH, I do think a fruit/nut orchard with under-story of pea-shrub and clover combined with feeding waste fruit to free-range hogs and legume/clover mix to meat rabbits would likely be an example of the most sustainable sort of kilo-calorie to human effort system at or around a human population level of approximately 5 to 10 billion.

Ketosis induced through starvation or high-fat diet is in some ways more like the metabolism of gluteofemoral fat stores. It increases the level of DHA in the bloodstream. Likely this is due to the fact that during time of starvation preservation of brain of individual would be preferred evolutionary mechanism, just like development of brain of infant is preferred evolutionary mechanism. However, I would hypothesize that this would vary with ratios of visceral/subcutaneous/gluteofemoral/lean tissue available for metabolism and also ratio of omega-3 vs. omega-6 fat sources in diet. IOW, a relatively lean male eating a diet composed exclusively of salmon would exhibit higher DHA levels than a man metabolizing large deposits of visceral fat while eating a diet composed exclusively of corn oil margarine.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:20 am
by BRUTE
after reading "the vegetarian myth", brute is convinced that ruminants like cows and sheep are much more efficient. the argument is basically that if kept right (in tight groups) they mimic the herding behavior of paleolithic beasts (mammoths etc) through their eating patterns and trampling action, which is required to keep the right kind of stress on grass lands to keep them growing. this allows for lots of meat to be grown relatively easily, with little oversight, without much animal cruelty, and it's pretty much the most healthy source of fat there is. hogs are good too.

it's also a weird comparison to say that 1 acre of tropical rainforest binds more CO2 than 1 acre of savanna grassland - maybe, but humans don't exactly have a choice between those 2 in most places. there need to exist very specific conditions for rainforests, they are not as well-suited for food production, and there are lots of places where humans could easily let cattle graze that could never sustain a rainforest due to the local climate.

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:06 pm
by halfmoon
@7wb5, thank you for taking the time to explain the link between maternal body type and infant survival/IQ. This is remarkable. Since the only pants that really fit me are made for teenage boys, it's a very good thing I didn't have children; they would probably have single-digit IQs. :(

Re: Anti-Sugar Elitism

Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 7:49 am
by 7Wannabe5
@halfmoon: It's the ratio that is relevant, not the absolute size of hips. Twiggy had healthy ratio. Human infants only weigh around 7.5 lbs., so thigh and hip fat equivalent to around 8 sticks of butter would probably be adequate. Also, females with phenotype indicative of high fertility tend towards greater incidence of cancer of reproductive organs, especially if they do not have children or breastfeed. Very high incidence of uterine cancer in older domesticated doe rabbits that are not neutered or have never been bred to a proven buck.


@BRUTE: I agree that humans are omnivorous scavengers, not herbivores. However, given that in the realm of health, modern, affluent humans are mostly attempting to facilitate fit survival of themselves as individuals as long as possible past the age of likely reproduction (40 for females, 60 for males roughly), "natural" diet of our ancient ancestors is only semi-relevant.

That said, I think it would be possible to create a sustainable closed loop (except for flows such as solar energy)system in which a number of humans primarily consumed beef and dairy products. I would have to do some math to determine the population that could be supported with such a system.