Fruit- good or bad?

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Jamie in Chile
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:54 pm
Jamie in Chile wrote: Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:47 pm That's interesting. My kids eat a moderate amount of fruit and vegetables, but that's mostly due to fruit. I'd say they get about 7-15% of their calories from fruit and about 2-4% from vegetables. Does that sound bad to you?
It's probably more than most people.
Sometimes you can hide more veggies in things. You could also favor berries over sweeter fruit and that could help too.
Jamie in Chile wrote: Fri Jul 28, 2017 8:47 pm Do we need to try and push up the vegetable amount? Most health guidelines are for fruit and veg together, they don't specify the ratio of the two...
For simplicity's sake, probably. Even from fruit to fruit, and veggie to veggie, nutritional differences can be pretty large.
ok thanks
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Jamie in Chile wrote: Tue Aug 01, 2017 10:05 pm ok thanks
Just to clarify you're probably doing pretty well, no need to push too hard. I would go slow and make sure you encourage them (and they're getting enough beans and a child's multivitamin, which are a lot more important for health and development). :)
Jamie in Chile
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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You're saying beans and multivitamin are appropriate for development for kids on a vegetarian/vegan diet, or for anyone?

They don't eat beans. They eat more carbs (like chips, rice, pasta and bread) and animals products as the main substance.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Jamie in Chile wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:50 pm You're saying beans and multivitamin are appropriate for development for kids on a vegetarian/vegan diet, or for anyone?
Any children can benefit from that.
Jamie in Chile wrote: Wed Aug 02, 2017 8:50 pmThey don't eat beans. They eat more carbs (like chips, rice, pasta and bread) and animals products as the main substance.
If you could get them to eat more beans and less meat, that would make a big difference. We need to focus on healthy protein sources to set up good life long behavior.
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Steve Wagar
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Folks, come on now, the best thing you can say about fruit is that it is "mostly empty calories"? I have to say, this doesn't make much sense. Where are you getting these calories that aren't so empty? I think we can discount leafy greens and other low-calorie vegetables because you'll never be able to eat enough calories to survive eating just them. And let's rule out animal products since we presumably aren't so keen on them in this group. That leaves grains, legumes, roots, nuts, seeds and avocados. I've been a fruitarian for 9 years trying to hit Pritikin's ideal 80-10-10 balance, and nuts, seeds and avocados are too high in fat to go to for very many calories. That leaves fruit, grains, legumes and roots. If I'm eating any nuts, seeds and avocados, which I am, fruit is the only way to counter those fat numbers to get anywhere near 80-10-10, which I'll admit I have never quite attained. I am no fruitarian purist; I do eat some grains, legumes and roots; but fruit is the ideal human diet and is where you should primarily look to get calories. I use Douglas Graham's The 80/10/10 Diet as my general reference on this. I know he didn't originate it and has been criticized by detractors, but it seems very reasonable to me, even though I am too much of a foodie to attain his level of monofructal eating or the 80-10-10 goal. Note that fruitarian never meant all fruit: leafy greens are indispensable, and I advocate moderation by including a wide variety of other foods in small quantities, and I recommend modest vitamin supplements for an extra level of security.

As for Dr. Gregor, he is a great guy who does more good stuff with the science of diet than anyone, but let's not kid ourselves: food science is in its infancy (and hardly even in that). At this stage, we still know more from common sense than we can back up with science. And common sense says people evolved to eat mostly fruit, and, as notably, are not evolved to eat meat, dairy, grains, beans, roots, nuts, seeds, spices, or most especially processed foods and additives. Is it really going to come as any surprise that our bodies are just going to be a lot healthier giving them what they were designed for than alternate foodstuffs? Would you expect a car to run as well on coal as gas? We could go down into the details, but it mostly comes down to common sense. Until our science is a whole lot better than it is now we should stick with Mother Nature's best recommendations.
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Jebus
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI think we can discount leafy greens and other low-calorie vegetables because you'll never be able to eat enough calories to survive eating just them.
Who has suggested eating only low calorie vegetables?
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI've been a fruitarian for 9 years trying to hit Pritikin's ideal 80-10-10 balance
What makes you believe these are the perfect ratios? Why would 10% fats be better than 5% well balanced poly fats?
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmlet's not kid ourselves: food science is in its infancy
This is why we should only make conclusions on what we know and not make guesses on what we don't (yet) know.
How to become vegan in 4.5 hours:
1.Watch Forks over Knives (Health)
2.Watch Cowspiracy (Environment)
3. Watch Earthlings (Ethics)
Congratulations, unless you are a complete idiot you are now a vegan.
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmWhere are you getting these calories that aren't so empty?
Non-sweet fruit like squash, tomatoes, avocado, etc.
Modestly sweet and high antioxidant fruits like berries.
Beans, lots of beans. And nuts and seeds. Whole grains.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI think we can discount leafy greens and other low-calorie vegetables because you'll never be able to eat enough calories to survive eating just them.
You could, but it would take some work.
Cooking and blending both help.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI've been a fruitarian for 9 years trying to hit Pritikin's ideal 80-10-10 balance, and nuts, seeds and avocados are too high in fat to go to for very many calories.
Why 80-10-10?

The evidence suggests that, as long as you aren't in ketosis or protein/nutrient deficient, there's no such thing as too much healthy polyunsaturated and monounsaturated plant fat (as long as you don't overdo it on the total calories). You just want to limit saturated and trans fats, and make sure you're getting lots of nutrients with those fats so they aren't empty calories (nuts are an amazing source).

Anything from 30% to 60% from carbs would probably be healthy. I think 80% is too high, and the epidemiological data seems to support that (although obviously we don't have a lot of people getting those calories from fruit, so we don't know if fruit as a source is protective in ways refined grains and sugar isn't, but to be safe we should still avoid going that high carb because it does raise triglycerides and we have some idea of the mechanisms of action by which that increases the risk of heart disease).
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI am no fruitarian purist; I do eat some grains, legumes and roots; but fruit is the ideal human diet and is where you should primarily look to get calories. I use Douglas Graham's The 80/10/10 Diet as my general reference on this.
Why would you think fruit is ideal?
Graham isn't a good source; he has been rightfully criticized.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmAs for Dr. Gregor, he is a great guy who does more good stuff with the science of diet than anyone, but let's not kid ourselves: food science is in its infancy (and hardly even in that).
As Jebus said, all the more reason to hold out for the evidence, and follow the best evidence we have which is that unsaturated plant fats are healthy.
It's best to hedge your bets with a more balanced ratio rather than going to one extreme or another.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that Eco-Atkins (the vegan Atkins) might be the healthiest diet too, but not enough to be conclusive or to cut out carbs.
I'd hedge your bets with 50% low glycemic carbs, 30% healthy plant fats, and 20% healthy plant protein.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmAt this stage, we still know more from common sense than we can back up with science. And common sense says people evolved to eat mostly fruit, and, as notably, are not evolved to eat meat, dairy, grains, beans, roots, nuts, seeds, spices, or most especially processed foods and additives.
You're right about processed foods, but wrong about the others. We've had thousands of years evolving on a largely grain based diet; and dietary evolution is FAST. It's not like evolving to fly or something like that. Digestive and metabolic changes happen even faster than your teeth change shape. Dogs are one simple proof of that (I mentioned this in another thread), and we can witness adaptations to eating more starches, grains, veggies.
In the mere thousands of years eating dairy, Europeans evolved genes to deal with it, same with alcohol, Inuit developed genes to deal with a very high fat diet, Indians have specialized genes to their diets too. We're starting to discover how much genetic variation there is from population to population caused by a few thousand years of dietary differences; this is stuff we don't even have to look to archaeology for.

What the tree-dwelling apes we descended from ate is not very relevant unless you're a time traveler from the stone age. At that point it's pretty arbitrary and you might as well go back even farther to the first mammals and say the ideal diet for us is insects because we all evolved from insectivores long before fruit even existed (fruit is a relatively new thing in the evolutionary time-line, and it didn't even exist when mammals evolved).

There's some truth to our ancestors having high fruit diets, but they were not the fruits of today which have been cultivated to be sugar and starch bombs, rather they were the ancient ancestors of modern fruit.
For example, here's a real banana: Image

And when we look at these ancient foods, we see that they're much higher in protein per calorie, much higher in fat per calorie, higher in fiber, and much lower in sugars than our modern mutant foods that humans cultivated for taste, not nutrition.
If you exclusively ate fruits that our ancient ancestors would have had access to thousands of years ago, you might have a point, but all of the fruit you can buy in a supermarket today (except perhaps some berries, which haven't been changed much) are about as natural as a bulldog.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmUntil our science is a whole lot better than it is now we should stick with Mother Nature's best recommendations.
But these aren't mother nature's recommendations, they're the recommendations of a disgraced chiropractor based on bad science.
All of the existing science, as limited as it may be, points in a pretty clear direction and says that plant fats are healthy.
Whether this kind of 80-10-10 or Keto, I don't think we should be going to extremes based on speculation from some misrepresented sampling from a narrow span of human history. You can also cherry pick narrow spans of human history (like ice age) where a lot of meat was consumed (as meat advocates do). Doesn't mean it's good for us.
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Jebus wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:09 pm Who has suggested eating only low calorie vegetables?
I'm just ruling out the obvious first.
Jebus wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:09 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI've been a fruitarian for 9 years trying to hit Pritikin's ideal 80-10-10 balance
What makes you believe these are the perfect ratios? Why would 10% fats be better than 5% well balanced poly fats?
It's like climate science. 97% agree it is happening. Of course, there is going to be a lot less agreement on diet science, as it is (as I pointed out) in its infancy, but I see a lot of evidence accumulating over 50 years around Pritikin's numbers. There is much that is approximate about them, and I'm sure a variety of ideal diets exist which vary from it, but we don't know yet what they are. If you weigh Pritikin's numbers against best guesses for our natural diet, which are arguably the best diet for us by definition, you will find a strong agreement.
Jebus wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 5:09 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmlet's not kid ourselves: food science is in its infancy
This is why we should only make conclusions on what we know and not make guesses on what we don't (yet) know.
By which I have to assume you are agreeing with my conclusions. :lol: But seriously, it comes down to what you mean by "know".
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmWhere are you getting these calories that aren't so empty?
Non-sweet fruit like squash, tomatoes, avocado, etc.
Modestly sweet and high antioxidant fruits like berries.
Beans, lots of beans. And nuts and seeds. Whole grains.
Well, as I'm sure you know, Graham doesn't recommend beans or grains. He cites that they are not natural foods for humans, which is hard to argue with considering they can't be digested raw, and he also suggests that their nutritional balance will consequently not be great for us. For instance, beans are higher in protein, which "thrive best on a diet composed of less than 10% of calories from protein", lack vitamin C, "an essential nutrient for humans" and make humans gassy, "an indication that their digestive processes have been compromised." These are just some obvious things we can spot. For these reasons I eat very little legumes. Grains are harder to fault; about the worse I've seen is that some contain opioids which can be addictive. Again, though, lack of obvious flaws doesn't mean more subtle problems we haven't spotted.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI think we can discount leafy greens and other low-calorie vegetables because you'll never be able to eat enough calories to survive eating just them.
You could, but it would take some work.
Cooking and blending both help.
I'll concede that it could be possible, but the fact that it is not practical in the wild shows it is not the way we evolved, so it is not an ideal solution.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmI've been a fruitarian for 9 years trying to hit Pritikin's ideal 80-10-10 balance, and nuts, seeds and avocados are too high in fat to go to for very many calories.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm Why 80-10-10?

Anything from 30% to 60% from carbs would probably be healthy. I think 80% is too high, and the epidemiological data seems to support that
Delving into this deeper both goes beyond my expertise and would exhaust all of my time. All I can say is I have read a fair amount over the years and I have concluded that 80-10-10 seems best supported to me. Further, I think any whole-foods plant-based diet that excluded nuts, seeds and avocados would come very close to 80-10-10. Perhaps adding enough nuts, seeds and avocados to upset that balance would do no harm, I can't say, but I think moderation is the best policy until we know more.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm (although obviously we don't have a lot of people getting those calories from fruit, so we don't know if fruit as a source is protective in ways refined grains and sugar isn't, but to be safe we should still avoid going that high carb because it does raise triglycerides and we have some idea of the mechanisms of action by which that increases the risk of heart disease).
On the contrary, we should avoid NOT going that high carb until we have some idea of the risks that drastically altering the natural human diet might cause. We actually know quite a few of those risks; pretty much every disease is caused or exacerbated by such diets. Again, I would suggest you are overvaluing the findings of nutritional science; aside from being in its infancy it also usually finds what people want to find.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pm but fruit is the ideal human diet and is where you should primarily look to get calories. I use Douglas Graham's The 80/10/10 Diet as my general reference on this.
Why would you think fruit is ideal?
Graham isn't a good source; he has been rightfully criticized.
Don't shoot the messenger. Graham makes a very clear case that we evolved to eat fruit and virtually nothing else. I challenge you to refute it.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm As Jebus said, all the more reason to hold out for the evidence, and follow the best evidence we have which is that unsaturated plant fats are healthy.
It's best to hedge your bets with a more balanced ratio rather than going to one extreme or another.
I agree, I totally hedge my bets and go for the most moderate, balanced approach. I would say you are playing with fire.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm I'd hedge your bets with 50% low glycemic carbs, 30% healthy plant fats, and 20% healthy plant protein.
Assuming you are talking about a whole-foods plant-based diet, you'll probably be fine for the most part with those percentages. Perhaps it is only refined oils that are killing vegans. I don't know, but I think it hedges bets better to combine that with our evolved 80-10-10, which is why I generally achieve about 70-15-15 or possibly sometimes 60-20-20. It is not like I have ever counted. Realistically, given the incredible temptations I face (and sometimes succumb to), I believe that if I don't focus as strictly on fruit as I can manage, my health will be compromised.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmpeople evolved to eat mostly fruit, and, as notably, are not evolved to eat meat, dairy, grains, beans, roots, nuts, seeds, spices, or most especially processed foods and additives.
You're right about processed foods, but wrong about the others. We've had thousands of years evolving on a largely grain based diet; and dietary evolution is FAST. It's not like evolving to fly or something like that. Digestive and metabolic changes happen even faster than your teeth change shape. Dogs are one simple proof of that (I mentioned this in another thread), and we can witness adaptations to eating more starches, grains, veggies.
In the mere thousands of years eating dairy, Europeans evolved genes to deal with it, same with alcohol, Inuit developed genes to deal with a very high fat diet, Indians have specialized genes to their diets too. We're starting to discover how much genetic variation there is from population to population caused by a few thousand years of dietary differences; this is stuff we don't even have to look to archaeology for.
I think this is mostly wishful thinking. Yes, I will grant you that some adaptations have come in quickly to give us tolerance for foods we otherwise could not eat. But tolerance is not the same thing as being designed to eat something. We can clearly tolerate all those foods that require cooking/processing, but in subtle ways they shock our metabolisms and make us sick. Primordial fruit, however, can't be faulted for that.

I don't think you have to go back to the first mammals... 20 million years or so of primate evolution just carries more weight, in my opinion, than thousands of years of last-minute adaptations.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm There's some truth to our ancestors having high fruit diets, but they were not the fruits of today which have been cultivated to be sugar and starch bombs, rather they were the ancient ancestors of modern fruit.

And when we look at these ancient foods, we see that they're much higher in protein per calorie, much higher in fat per calorie, higher in fiber, and much lower in sugars than our modern mutant foods that humans cultivated for taste, not nutrition.
If you exclusively ate fruits that our ancient ancestors would have had access to thousands of years ago, you might have a point, but all of the fruit you can buy in a supermarket today (except perhaps some berries, which haven't been changed much) are about as natural as a bulldog.
This is a pretty good point. I have heard part of it before, but not considered the impact on 80-10-10 ratios. I would probably have to agree with you that if such fruit turned out to be 50-30-20, say, then it would probably be better for us than today's 88-6-6 fruit. But I rather doubt the impact to the ratios would be very appreciable. I suspect our monkeying with fruit has affected palatability more than the fundamental nutritional values. But even it if has, those were fruits, not beans, and I would still argue we stand to gain more metabolically by sticking with fruits than branching out into whatever beans might do to us. But again, that is one of the reasons I hedge my bets and eat a small amount of grains, beans, roots, nuts, seeds, spices.
Steve Wagar wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 3:33 pmUntil our science is a whole lot better than it is now we should stick with Mother Nature's best recommendations.
brimstoneSalad wrote: Thu Aug 31, 2017 6:16 pm But these aren't mother nature's recommendations, they're the recommendations of a disgraced chiropractor based on bad science.
All of the existing science, as limited as it may be, points in a pretty clear direction and says that plant fats are healthy.
Whether this kind of 80-10-10 or Keto, I don't think we should be going to extremes based on speculation from some misrepresented sampling from a narrow span of human history. You can also cherry pick narrow spans of human history (like ice age) where a lot of meat was consumed (as meat advocates do). Doesn't mean it's good for us.
Ah, here it comes, it had to get ad hominem. Well, you won't win any arguments with me exploiting logical fallacies. But I'm with you, going to extremes based on 40 or so years of science would be a misrepresenting sampling from a narrow span of human history. Doesn't make it good for us. :lol:
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brimstoneSalad
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Re: Fruit- good or bad?

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Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm Ah, here it comes, it had to get ad hominem. Well, you won't win any arguments with me exploiting logical fallacies. But I'm with you, going to extremes based on 40 or so years of science would be a misrepresenting sampling from a narrow span of human history. Doesn't make it good for us. :lol:
This is not a fallacy, as you continually reference him supposedly as an authority. If you believe the 80-10-10 ratio on other grounds, you shouldn't mention Graham.
An argument from unqualified authority is a fallacy; an argument from a qualified authority has legitimate value. I'm arguing against his qualifications: he has none whatsoever. His argument is as meaningful as quoting a random youtube comment.

What's worse, Graham is a very sketchy figure.
It's like arguing to for animal welfare and continually mentioning Hitler because he also made arguments for animal welfare. There's no reason to refer to Graham to advocate 80-10-10 unless you're just trying to "trigger" people.
He's not the first who advocated it, he's not an authority on evolution nutrition or anything else (claiming that he is because he wrote a book on 80-10-10 is circular reasoning), and all it's going to do is harm your argument if you're referring to him as one.

Your argument would be a lot better if you mentioned actual sources, and stopped citing Graham. Show me direct evidence that doesn't appeal to a known quack with no qualifications, Graham is not regarded as a trustworthy source. It's not a fallacy to point that out when you keep mentioning him in a way that implies you're trying to give your arguments credibility.

I would take an argument YOU made up on the spot much more seriously than one you cite from Graham.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmHe cites that they are not natural foods for humans, which is hard to argue with considering they can't be digested raw,
False. Humans have been using fire for thousands of years and it played a crucial role in our evolution.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmand he also suggests that their nutritional balance will consequently not be great for us. For instance, beans are higher in protein, which "thrive best on a diet composed of less than 10% of calories from protein"
False, there is no compelling evidence for that ratio anywhere. Not in the fossil record, not in our DNA, not anywhere. All of our closest relatives eat more protein than that (do some research into Chimpanzee diets).
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmlack vitamin C, "an essential nutrient for humans"
That's also false. Beans contain vitamin C, and they still have some left in them after cooking too.
It is true that they don't have as much as some other foods, but that is not evidence that they are not natural; many foods that are natural do not provide complete nutrition on their own, which is why it's important to eat a variety of foods.

If your argument is that any food that does not provide every single thing humans need is unnatural... well, the only thing you have left to eat is meat, which may be natural but that wouldn't be a healthy diet.

The fact that Vitamin C is an essential nutrient proves only that humans ate SOME moderate sources of vitamin C. We didn't just eat one thing, and it's easy to get vitamin C from a small amount of raw plant matter, even avoiding fruits. Vitamin C is also found in meats, even cooked. Inuit got all they needed from fish.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmand make humans gassy, "an indication that their digestive processes have been compromised."
Beans contain some resistant starches which are prebiotic, and have important health benefits. The gassiness caused by beans and other vegetables is a sign of a healthy microbiome. Other apes, such as gorillas, as perpetually gassy on their natural diets.

Nothing about gassiness indicates a "compromised" digestion.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmThese are just some obvious things we can spot.
Well, they're all untrue to varying degrees. Some of them asserting as fact the exact opposite of what actual science has to say on the topic.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmFor these reasons I eat very little legumes.
I hope you will consider eating more of them, they're not only incredibly healthy, but they're also one of the most environmentally sustainable foods on the planet.

Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmI'll concede that it could be possible, but the fact that it is not practical in the wild shows it is not the way we evolved, so it is not an ideal solution.
That's why we had, and out closest relatives have, mixed diets.
Our closest relatives also spend a LOT of time eating greens. What allowed humans to stop doing that is the discovery of fire and cooking, which allowed us to use other food sources like starchy roots, and nuts like acorns and such that are inedible to us raw.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmFurther, I think any whole-foods plant-based diet that excluded nuts, seeds and avocados would come very close to 80-10-10.
Only if you got a very small percentage of your calories from greens. Looking at our closest relatives, and how we ate for the most significant time span prior to our discovery of fire, that's not a realistic diet of ancient man.
Certainly we did gorge on fruit when it was available, but that was intermittent, and ancient fruits were also lower in sugar than modern ones as I have explained.

It's fair to say that most ancient people didn't have access to avocados, but it's incorrect to exclude nuts and seeds. These have been a prominent part of the human diet for a very long time, particularly as they (unlike fruit) store well.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pmAgain, I would suggest you are overvaluing the findings of nutritional science; aside from being in its infancy it also usually finds what people want to find.
I'm not overvaluing it, but it's all we have. The arguments from evolution you're bringing up are just false. Ancient humans ate all kinds of different diets depending on time and location; flexibility was the key to survival, as it often is. The only way you can draw conclusions from evolution is by cherry picking and appealing to psuedocience and outright falsehoods as I debunked above.

Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm Don't shoot the messenger. Graham makes a very clear case that we evolved to eat fruit and virtually nothing else. I challenge you to refute it.
See, here you are appealing to Graham as an authority. He isn't.
Why can't you make the case for fruit yourself? You're at least as qualified than he is.

We did not evolve eating virtually nothing but fruit, and we didn't even evolve eating a lot of fruit. It was an occasional treat when it was available.

You can't just make an appeal to unqualified authority fallacy, and then follow it up with a burden of proof fallacy. I'm making actual arguments and referencing scientific facts. I'd like to see the same from you if you can. We can put a pin in this discussion for a while to give you time to research the matter.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm I generally achieve about 70-15-15 or possibly sometimes 60-20-20. It is not like I have ever counted.
60-20-20 is probably safe, that's only a little higher than the epidemiological evidence suggests is a risk factor for carbs, but you're mostly eating whole carbs so your risk may be mitigated by that.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm Realistically, given the incredible temptations I face (and sometimes succumb to), I believe that if I don't focus as strictly on fruit as I can manage, my health will be compromised.
I can understand that, but whole food beans and nuts can't be that dramatic a temptation, can they be?

Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm Yes, I will grant you that some adaptations have come in quickly to give us tolerance for foods we otherwise could not eat.
That is, by definition, evolving to eat something.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm But tolerance is not the same thing as being designed to eat something.
If you're appealing to a god or something. Otherwise we just tolerate things better and better, and absorb nutrients from them better and better as we become more specialized. So, no, it is the same thing.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm We can clearly tolerate all those foods that require cooking/processing, but in subtle ways they shock our metabolisms and make us sick.
Evidence?
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm Primordial fruit, however, can't be faulted for that.
Again, fruit is very new. For most of our evolution, it didn't even exist.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm I don't think you have to go back to the first mammals... 20 million years or so of primate evolution just carries more weight, in my opinion, than thousands of years of last-minute adaptations.
You're just cherry picking now. Because we were insectivores long before fruit even existed, and have had hundreds of millions of years eating insects, small animals, fungus, and leaves.

Why doesn't hundreds of millions of years of evolution carry more weight than a few millions years of last-hour adaptations?
Answer: Because it doesn't fit the 80-10-10 narrative.

The reality is that the more recent adaptations carry more weight. An animal can go from herbivore to carnivore and back in a few thousand years. We carry around the needed genes in our populations to be mixed and matched to give us that flelxibility (dogs are compelling evidence of this alone), and a significant amount of the flexibility is even epigenetic and in the microbiome too. We can adapt considerably in a single generation.

The only animals that have real difficulty eating very different diets are ruminant animals because that doesn't just involve different ratios of enzymes and different lengths of digestive tracts (easy changes), but an entire organ. They are excessively specialized and have in a sense evolved into a dead-end that's much harder to evolve back out of. Cats are a partial example because they can't produce Taurine, so they're stuck eating some meat or synthetic taurine (they unfortunately can not go vegan without supplements), but their digestive systems are morphologically stuck in the way of cows. No factors like these apply to humans and most other animals (lack of ability to produce vitamin C only excludes very unusual diets of extremely processed foods or with very limited variety).
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm This is a pretty good point. I have heard part of it before, but not considered the impact on 80-10-10 ratios. I would probably have to agree with you that if such fruit turned out to be 50-30-20, say, then it would probably be better for us than today's 88-6-6 fruit. But I rather doubt the impact to the ratios would be very appreciable.
It wouldn't be very applicable because we didn't eat that much fruit. It only becomes important if you ignore the science and insist we are only adapted to a fruit diet, despite archaeological evidence, genetic evidence, modern nutritional evidence, and evidence based on our closest relatives.

I would prefer to convince you we ate more greens and that we HAVE evolved to eat cooked food too.
Steve Wagar wrote: Fri Sep 01, 2017 2:13 pm I suspect our monkeying with fruit has affected palatability more than the fundamental nutritional values.
No, palatability is inherently linked to concentration of sugars, and lower amounts of fiber and other nutrients for fruit. We don't want bananas full of thick nutritious seeds because they aren't fun to chew.
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