My Intestinal Saga, Part 4: Gurus and Rotten Meat

Rotting meat in mason jars.

So there I was.  It was late summer 2006.  The sweltering Tucson sun beat down on the city relentlessly.  White tail doves could be heard flapping and cooing on rooftops and power lines, and the cicadas' symphony was in full swing.  I sat inside, bathing in the cool air of the swamp cooler, a plate of raw ground beef sitting in front of me.  I took a bite.  It went down easy.  I took another and my body screamed for more and more -- so I fed it.  I followed the meat with a few spoonfuls of raw, "unheated," honey and some raw butter.  I was satisfied like I hadn't felt in years.  And it was all thanks to a man by the odd name of Aajonus Vonderplanitz and his book, The Recipe For Living Without Disease.  In this book, Vonderplanitz outlined the key to optimal health and vitality through food, and it enthralled me.  Raw meat, unheated honey, raw dairy, raw vegetable juices -- these were the ingredients to becoming well again, and I had no problem eating all I wanted and enjoying the heck out of it.  My family and friends were somewhat worried about me at his point.  Salmonella, E. Coli, and countless other bacteria existed in raw food products -- how would this negatively affect my health, particularly my already stressed out gut?  Surely I would get food poisoning at the very least.  And straight butter?  Heart attack city!  Well, after several weeks of the eating all of the foods suggested by the quirky Aajonus, I was happy to report that I had absolutely no problems.  In fact, I had more energy than I could remember feeling in my whole life.  Then I thought, "Hmm.  I wonder if I could feel even healthier?"

Aajonus Vonderplanitz believed if raw meat was healthy, then rotten or "high" meat is probably even healthier.  The Inuit traditionally enjoyed rotted flesh as part of their diet, and so did many cultures around the world.  I was insanely curious about this.  Would it feel good in my body?  Or would I get really sick?  So I began making "high" meat -- filling mason jars with sliced up beef and airing them out every few days.  Oddly enough, the rotten smell that developed over a few weeks began to please my senses.  It smelled good, it looked good -- I couldn't wait to eat it.  Then the day came when it was ready.  So I took a jar filled with rotting, slimy meat outside, opened it, and reached in for my first taste of this supposed health elixir.  I loved it.  Weird, I know.  It just tasted way good for some reason.  Although the little white beads on the meat that had developed over the weeks somewhat disturbed me.  Were these some kind of worm eggs or something?  Was I ingesting parasites?  Well, even if I was, Mr. Vonderplanitz assured me in his book that they would merely detox my body and consume my unneeded intestinal wastes.  Win-win for me and my little worm buddies.  They get to eat and I get better!  Oh lord, I have done some interesting things in my life, and this one is up there on the list.

Again, much to my surprise, the most shocking thing that happened was -- well, that nothing happened.  I remained healthy and feeling quite good overall on my raw and rotten diet.  After a few months of this "primal diet," I encountered something even more alluring in my continual research: the raw paleo diet.  I joined a forum where there were a handful of folks experimenting with this diet -- consisting of nothing but raw meat and fat -- and experiencing great results.  (Apparently these folks still exist.)  Their stance on eating mostly organ meats made a lot of sense to me, as this was where the most nutrients exist, and if my goal was optimal health, well then I wanted all the nutrients I could get, gosh darn it!  I began the raw paleo diet with enthusiasm, picking up raw liver and raw beef fat from the butcher at a local organic foods store.  Damn, did that stuff taste good to me.  I swear, at the time, the liver tasted like chocolate and the beef fat tasted like ice cream.  Soon I was gorging on kidneys, spleens, tongues, and any other raw offal I could get my grubby little hands on.

Pretty soon I realized that zero-carb, raw paleo was the way to go (naturally, right?).  I felt great -- well, for the most part.  My back pain was pretty much gone at this point, but I seemed to have developed hard stools from the sudden transition to zero carbs + zero fiber.  Not only that, but I began to see fat chunks in my stool, which, at first I thought were gall stones until, ahem, closer inspection.  There also was this "heavy" feeling in my body at times, like I was walking underwater.  Also, another problem --chest pain -- came about when I started to try to eat only one large meal a day, as some folks on the raw paleo forum were suggesting as the optimal eating pattern.  It would sort of come and go and actually wasn't too bad ... until I tried to do some push-ups -- ouch.  I thought I was having a heart attack.  I calmed myself and decided that maybe it was just some kind of strain.  It hurt horribly for two days.

The Bear

During my raw paleo stint, I was also floating around the Active Low-Carber forum and talking with some zero-carb folks on there.  (You can probably still look up my posts; just search for my username, "rk900.")  We were a ragtag bunch of wandering souls.  There were people who swore that the only thing that kept their weight stable was absolutely no carbs -- not even too many eggs or liver.  Others were on the paleo bandwagon.  Still others were curious about the diet, but were not bought in due to fears of losing their cherished carbohydrates.  I felt proud to be one of the few who was practicing full-on paleo zero-carb, just as primitive humans had done for millions of years before me (or so I thought).  Then, all of the sudden a post appeared: "The real human diet is a totally carnivorous one."  The author of the post was a man simply known as "The Bear."  It began:

I have been eating the natural human dietary regime for over 47 years now. I do not eat anything whatsoever from vegetable sources. The only things veggie I use are spices. My diet is usually 60% fat and 40% protein by calories. I used to eat 80/20 when younger and about twice as much quantity of meat also, but that seems too much energy at my age, which is 71- even though I am very active. I think the body actually becomes more efficient with energy as you age, but I have no way of proving it true. Otherwise, my body today is very like it was at the age of 30. I figure most of what we call 'aging' is due to insulin damage to the collagen and other body structures. No carbs = no insulin. I don't heal quite as fast when injured as I did as a youngster, however. But I have few wrinkles, and my skin is still strong and elastic.

The guru had arrived.  Responses came pouring in.  The Bear had answers for everything.  His healthy 47 years of experience with the zero-carb "regime" proved that modern humans could live well on such a diet without problems.  There was a very strong divide on the forum: some loved him and others thought he was full of crap.  One guy even started a dedicated blog on the "Zero Carb Path."  The Bear validated everything I believed at the time, and I followed guru's advice on eating and living well.  I still had the aforementioned problems with my gut, but decided that I felt better than any other time in my life, so I continued on "the path."


The saga continues in Part 5, coming soon.
  

Primitive Nutrition Talk: Health Stories (Continued)

Here's some more footage from part one of the Wintercount discussion.  Here I continue my health story and recount fond memories of my experiences with zero-carbohydrate diets, digestive problems, and giardia.

Small Game in Primitive Living, Part 3: Cooking For Maximum Nutrients

Indigenous peoples all over the world applied universal cooking practices to their animal foods for optimum nutrition.  For larger game, a common practice was to consume nutritious organ meats -- liver, kidneys, heart, etc. -- in addition to muscle flesh and fat after roasting over the fire, boiling in stews, or burying in pits lined with hot rocks.  The full spectrum of amino acids, water-soluble and fat-soluble vitamins exist in these parts of the animal.  For minerals, bones were added to long-cooked broths or cracked open to extract the rich, creamy marrow inside.  Smaller bones were sometimes gnawed on; the flavorful juices perhaps provided a dose of calcium and gelatin, similar to the nutrients found in bone broths.  The Townsend Newsletter For Doctors and Patients (2005) published an article about the properties of traditional bone broths and had this to say about nutritional content:

Broth can be thought of as a protein supplement, and a calcium supplement. The chemical ingredients extracted from broth are glycine and proline (collagen/gelatin), calcium and phosphorus (minerals), hyaluronic acid and chondroitin sulfate (GAGs), and other minerals, amino acids and GAGs in smaller amounts.

If my memory serves me correctly, I once read an anthropological account of a few hundred years ago in which one Native American tribe always had a pot of broth on the fire and added scraps and bones to this pot continuously.  The observer of this practice states that this tribe drank "copious" amounts of the broth.  

Aside from the boiling of bones to release their minerals and nutritive elements, some tribes went to great lengths to supply yet another source of fat -- in addition to marrow and body fat deposits -- called "bone grease."  This type of fat was attained by the long boiling of smashed bone and skimming the resultant grease off the surface.  In a book called Imagining Head-Smashed-In: Aboriginal Buffalo Hunting on the Northern Plains, author Jack Brink goes into incredible detail about the production of bone grease, even going so far as to reproduce indigenous boiling techniques by adding hot, fire-heated rocks to buffalo hide containers filled with water.  He explains how bone grease is different than marrow:

Though bone looks to be solid, it is really more of a latticework of twisted strands of bone tissue interspersed with tiny spaces ... The tiny spaces ... aren't empty; they are filled with small globules of fat.  Called bone grease, it is a fat separate from the marrow in that is located in the bone structure itself, not the marrow cavity. (p. 190) 

Another universal practice among primitive cultures is the use of blood.  In a class I took at Wintercount one year, called "Using the Whole Animal," we caught the blood of a freshly slaughtered goat in a bucket and consumed the thick, scarlet red liquid after cooking it in a frying pan over a fire.  It resembled ground meat and tasted very rich and satisfying.  Of course, many of us know of the Masai and their practice of drinking raw, fresh blood -- so cooking isn't a requirement.  Blood is a good source of electrolytes, especially sodium, which are sometimes hard to come by in primitive living.  It is also high in protein and, in and of itself, a very sustaining food.

Powdered Woodrat

Now that we've reviewed some of the primitive cooking and eating practices for larger animals, let's examine how this information relates to the main subject of this series: small game.  While it goes without saying that all of the nutrients present in large game are also present in smaller game, the difference in cooking techniques to maximize these nutrients requires some explanation.  The cooking of small game is perhaps a simpler, more effective means of maximizing nutrition in primitive living due to the simple fact that long boiling times and extensive processing and butchering is not required.  In fact, many small animals can be eaten whole, bones and all (of course, removing the intestines is a probably good idea in any case).

Author Paul Campbell, who I've met at several primitive skills gatherings, documents the traditional hunt and preparation of white-throated woodrat in his book, Survival Skills of Native California (pp. 340-345).  A Kiliwa Indian named Sam Ochurte leads Campbell on the hunt and, after procuring a few woodrats by way of bow and arrow, the native builds a small fire to cook his quarry.  He then singes the hair off, cooks the skin to a crisp, bacon-like consistency and removes the charred pieces of skin, eating each with a pinch of salt.  Ochurte then removes the intestines from the woodrats and returns them to the coals to finish cooking.  When thoroughly cooked, the whole rats are set upon one rock and pounded with another, as in a mano and metate setup, until they are a small pile of shredded meat and crushed bone.  He then picks out any uncrushed fragments and the rest -- smashed up bones, teeth, meat, and organs -- he eats.  As Campbell acknowledges, "The nutritional value of even one complete rodent must have been considerable."

Campbell notes that similar processing techniques were observed historically in several other California tribes.  Rabbits, hares, squirrels, and other small game were prepared this way.  In addition to this, larger game bones, such as deer vertebrae, were also pounded and stored or eaten -- ancient calcium supplements in a sense.  He describes other cooking methods for small game, including the boiling of whole small animals -- taken out temporarily to remove the skin similar to the above account -- and eaten whole, guts and all.               

By using the whole animal, primitive peoples easily attained the nutrition required for optimal health, and modern abos would be wise to follow suit in primitive living excursions and experiments if they are to sustain their health and maximize nutrients to thrive in the wilderness.   
          

Small Game in Primitive Living, Part 1: The Paiute Deadfall

Some of you may recall the post I wrote on Matt Graham, called "Talking Nutrition with a Wild Man," in which I describe his 6-month primitive living experience and explain how he attained adequate nutritional support in the wilderness of southern Utah. Most of what he ate consisted of small game: mice, squirrels, rabbits. What I didn't get into was the methods Matt utilized to capture these animals and the specific nutrients and calories that they supplied him with. In this post I'll describe one of the methods he used -- my friend and yours, the figure-four Paiute deadfall. In a later post, we'll dive deeper into the nutrional contents and caloric contribution of small game commonly caught by such a trap.

Mouse Pancakes and Squirrel Flapjacks

When I was 19-years-old, I learned how to make my first trap from my long-time mentor and friend, Vince Pinto (who now owns and operates Raven's Way Wild Journeys). It was a simple little contraption. Two sticks, each around six inches long and some agave fiber cordage made for the basis of a trap that I would use to procure many rodents in many primitive living trips in the years that followed. Named the figure-four Paiute deadfall after the very crafty, very omnivorious Northern Paiute natives who apparently pioneered it, this ingenious trap is hailed by modern-day abos everywhere as a reliable way to provide food in the bush. Matt Graham certainly endorses it. In fact, on his primitive trip, Matt only used two traps to supply his meat quarry: the Paiute deadfall and a spring snare. Knowing how to set a few traps really well, in his opinion, is better than knowing how to set many types of traps poorly. Quality not quantity.

Taking into consideration all the Paiute deadfalls I've set over the years, I'd say that this trap has squashed a mouse or a squirrel 50% of the time. Set six traps, get three little critters in my stomach. Matt and other masters of this trap with plenty of "dirt time" in the wilderness probably have a much higher success rate due to intimate knowledge of their regions as well as years of refinement and experimentation.

The Paiute deadfall components, in all its glory (aside from the rock needed to set it), is pictured below:

Yup, that's it. A few sticks and some cordage with a "toggle" piece attached. The sticks, made from pine, can be fashioned out of any sturdy type of wood. The uppermost stick in the photo -- the top-piece -- has cordage tied on and a notch carved into it for reasons you'll understand in a little bit. The other stick -- the foundation piece -- is carved to a flat point to fit nicely into the top-piece's notch; it's two stubby "legs" give it more stability when setting the trap. The cordage is made from artificial sinew, but any strong natural fibers will do. When I lived in the Sonoran desert, I was a big fan of yucca and agave fibers. I'll leave natural cordage-making skills for another time, though.

The dimensions pictured are by no means the only way to go about making this trap, but they seem to work well for me. All of the fancy carvings on the sticks aren't really neccesary, but I find them helpful in allowing me to adjust the length of cord on-the-fly by wrapping it around the top-piece, as well as securing the cord better on the bottom foundation piece. Below is what the trap looks like once it's set (here, you can see more clearly how I used the carvings):

You'll notice that, to complete the trap, I had to (1) find a rock with a nice flat bottom and wide base and (2) attain a long, thin bait stick to thread underneath the rock. Obviously, if I was actually setting this trap to procure an animal, I'd have speared some bait onto the bait stick before setting, such as local wild plants that a small animal might like -- maybe pinyon pine nuts, seed heads of various grasses -- or food I might have with me as trail snacks, such as raisins or peanut butter. Mice seem to really love raisins. Although no rodents came along after I set it, to my good fortune (and perhaps to the benefit of the more squeamish readers of this blog), this particular trap attracted a wild desert tangerine!

Notice the rocks I stacked on top of the main rock after setting the trap. This increases the weight and, thus, crushing force and speed of the deadfall. It also allows me to evaluate the stability of the trap. Now let's trigger the trap, lift the rock, and see what happens to the unsuspecting tangerine:

Ouch! As you can see, when the bait stick is tugged at or nudged in any way, the trap is triggered and the rock falls abrubtly, leaving very little time for the animal (or, in this case, fruit) to escape. The main components of the Paiute deadfall spring neatly into the air and out of the way of the rock, allowing the rock to lay perfectly flesh with the ground (or, ideally, a hard, flat rock underneath) -- only the thin bait stick, along with the bait, actually receives the impact. The unlucky creature who happened to trigger the trap is instantly crushed to death. Squish! Mouse pancakes!

More Resources For the Paiute Deadfall

For brevity's sake, I'm going to leave a more detailed discussion of this trap to Jim Riggs, one of the great influences of the primitive skills movement and a man with a lot of "dirt time." His article "Rocking On with the Paiute Deadfall" is by far the most thorough and well-written piece I have seen on this subject. Those of you out there in cyberland who want to experiment with a Paiute deadfall will benefit greatly from Mr. Riggs' description of the trap.

Also, a very good explanation of the Paiute deadfall is given in this video. I've never met the man who made this tutorial (Mark Lummio of Bushcraft Northwest), but he seems to really know what he's talking about. Absolutely fantastic video.

In the next post, I'll get into the nutritional and caloric details of small game animals that a person might find underneath his or her deadfall rocks day to day; and I'll evaluate the realities inherent in living off of such fare as Matt Graham did: processing, cooking, and eating trapped animals to thrive -- not just survive -- in the wilderness primitively.

Thanks to my good pal, Jeff Macdonald, for helping with the pictures.

The People of the Deer

Lately I've been enjoying an anthropological narrative called People of the Deer by Farley Mowat -- the famed and tenacious environmentalist, humanitarian, and defender of true scientific inquiry. In this colorful true-story adventure, first published in 1952, Mowat finds himself drawn, as he so often does, to a place far away in the middle of nowhere in the deep northern territories of Canada. It is here that he befriends and lives among an Eskimo group called the Ilhalmiut and begins to understand how modern encroachment -- namely fur-trapping and government policy -- is negatively affecting the native peoples' ability to live in a place where their ancestors had thrived for thousands of years before them. Mowat writes, quite bluntly, in the foreward of the 1975 edition of the book: "Genocide can be practiced in a variety of ways." Similar to Weston Price, he is not hesitant to place blame on Western culture for the decimation and struggle of the traditional peoples with whom he became intimately acquainted. From the foreword:

We have long prided ourselves on being a democratic nation, dedicated to the altar of freedom. Freedom for whom? If it is only freedom for ourselves to do as we please at the expense of others, then our pious stance is even more abhorrent than that of any overt tyrant -- for ours is based on a vile hypocrisy.

Fat and Deer Hairs

While the book contains many fascinating tidbits, among the most intriguing are Mowat's detailed descriptions of the traditional Ilhalmiut diet and their shifting health as a result of Western influence. When he first arrives at the small settlement of Ilhalmiut, the author is welcomed with a tray of meat that might make any Westerner's stomach churn:

Half a dozen parboiled legs of deer were spread out in a thick gravy which seemed to be composed of equal parts of fat and deer hairs. Bobbing about in the debris were a dozen tongues and, like a cage holding the lesser cuts of meats, there was an entire rib basket of a deer.

Still hungry? There's more!

There were side dishes too ... a skin sack, full of flakes of dry meat ... a smoking bundle of marrow bones ... neatly cracked to so that we would have no trouble extracting the succulent marrow. (p. 82)

Yum.

The cooking varied somewhat, but the food did not. The rule was meat at every meal and nothing else but meat, unless you could count a few well-rotted duck eggs which served as appetizers. To satisfy my curiousity I tried to estimate the quantity of meat Hekwaw [a member of the tribe] put away each day. I discovered he could handle ten to fifteen pounds when he was really hungry... (p. 85)

It doesn't take Mowat long to identify the key ingredient of the Ilhalmiut diet: fat. From his own experience on lean meat for an extended period of time, he describes the vast importance of fat in an all-meat diet through his battle with an affliction which he names, for want of a better term, mal de caribou, also known by a great many arctic explorers, prisoners of war, and human carnivores as rabbit starvation:

... persistent diarrhea was only part of the effect of mal de caribou. I was [also] filled with a sick lassitude, an increasing loss of will to work that made me quite useless ...

Mowat's guide -- a half-Eskimo, half-white man named Franz -- prepared and administered a peculiar remedy:

... he took out a half-pound of precious lard, melted it in a frying pan, and, when it was lukewarm and not yet congealed, he ordered me to drink it. Strangely, I was greedy for it ... I drank a lot of it, then went to bed; and by morning I was completely recovered ... I was suffering from a deficiency of fat and did not realize it. (p. 88)

Death and Disease Among the Ilhalmiut

Concerning the health of the Ilhalmiut people, Mowat goes into extensive historic, anecdotal, and statistical detail while attempting to get at the root of the Northern natives' plight of disease and illness following the arrival of Western culture. It's no secret to those who have studied into the writings and theories of nutritional heroes such as Weston Price, Sir Robert McCarrison, T.L. Cleave, and others that when modern foods such as white flour and sugar are introduced to a traditional culture ill health follows, worsening from generation to generation. Farley Mowat joins the ranks of these great independent thinkers when he waxes sensible, explaining his own theory as to why the people of the far North and other native peoples in history have succumbed to tuberculosis, measles, and small pox:

Perhaps you have heard of the decimation of the forest Indians brought about by disease, by lack of adaptability, by inherent laziness and indolence or by other causes ... you have never heard the truth, for all of these apparent causes are manifestions of the real destroyer, which is -- starvation. If you ask about the thousands of Indians and Eskimos who die each year of tuberculosis, if you ask about the measles and smallpox epidemics which ... have destroyed over one-tenth of the Northern natives ... these people too die of starvation ... (p.91)

Is it just me, or is Mr. Mowat on to something here? He goes on to tell the story of an Inuit tribe he lived with in the winter of 1948, the Idthen Eldeli -- literally meaning "Eaters of the Deer":

In 1860 ... there were about 2000 members of the Idthen ... when the deer moved ... the Idthen people followed after ... [they] anually traveled over a thousand miles through the Barrens.

In the eighteenth century the famous explorer Samuel Hearne journeyed ... with a band of these Indians and he speaks, as do many others, of the almost superhuman endurance and physical capacity of the Idthen people.

In the winter of 1948 when I lived with the Idthen ... they numbered a little over 150 men, women, and children who spent the winters on their scanty trap lines, starving through the cold months until they could fish for life along the opening rivers ... They are a passive, beaten, hopeless people who wait miserably for death. (p. 92)

What could be the instigator of such an unfortunate circumstance? Ol' Farley doesn't mince words:

Starvation first came to them when they began to subsist on a winter diet which now consists of 80 percent white flour, with a very little lard and baking powder, and in summer almost nothing but straight fish. The Idthen people now get little of the red meat and white fat of the deer, once their sole food. Three generations have been born and lived -- or died -- upon a diet of flour bannocks and fish eaten three times a day and washed down with tea. Each of these generations has been weaker and had less "immunity" to disease than the last. (p. 93)

Government aid: giving natives the short end of the stick in America since 1492. It's interesting how what Mowat refers to as starvation can also be seen as a displacement of native foods, as Weston Price pointed out in the 1930s. Either way, the result is lowered immunity and degeneration. Mowat's solution for the dilemma of this "starvation?" Here it is, in characteristic common sense:

Surely there is but one way to cure a man of the diseases which are the products of three generations of starvation, and that is to feed him. (p. 95)

Let them eat meat and fat!

The Reality of Primitive People's Lifespan

Human lifespan is one of the topics that frequently comes up in my discussions with others about primitive nutrition and health. In our day and age, this subject has become a trendy factor in gauging the overall health of any given population or individual. If a person lives a long time -- say 100 years -- they are considered long-lived and must have lived a healthful life to reach such an impressive age. Yet, there are always anomalies to this assumption. Comedian George Burns lived to be 100 while smoking between 10-15 cigars a day. At 98, he joked, "If I'd taken my doctor's advice and quit smoking when he advised me to, I wouldn't have lived to go to his funeral."

Western cultures' obsession with lifespan has existed for a very long time. The Bible cites people living for hundreds and thousands of years in ancient times. More recently, researchers were fascinated by claims of the Hunzakats commonly reaching ages of 120 and beyond (this myth is dispelled quite well by this website). On the other end of this spectrum, many experts and laymen agree that primitive humans' lifespan was nothing to be impressed about: old age during those times was thought to be around forty years old.

Recently, I came across a study that blows all these distortions, assumptions, and obsessions out of the water. The study is a meta-analysis -- meaning it draws off of the research of many other related studies, and is titled "Longevity Among Hunter-Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination." I suggest you give the full study a read, as there are many fascinating tidbits in it. The authors, Gurven and Kaplan, assembled lifespan and mortality data from around the world that included isolated hunter-gatherers (the closest living relatives to our paleolithic ancestors that we have), acculturated hunter-gatherers, isolated neolithic cultures, Western modern civilizations, and even chimpanzees for comparison. The authors focused solely on reliable demographic data from a handful of cultures. The table below sums up the results of the study well:

This data may come as a surprise to both romanticists of the ancients' supposed longevity, as well as to those that claim primitive human beings lived a life that was "nasty, brutish, and short." Here we have numbers that secure a middle ground amidst these two extremes. The authors of the study sum up their compiled information as follows:

The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68-78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional equivelent of an "adaptive" human lifespan.

So there you have it. Convincing research suggesting that our hunter-gatherer ancestors are not at all far-removed from modern civilized human beings in terms of lifespan.

Talking Nutrition with a Wild Man

At Winter Count, a primitive skills gathering in Casa Grande, AZ, I had an enlightening conversation concering nutrition with an amazing modern-day abo named Matt Graham. This is a man who lives primitively -- utilizing only what the land offers him -- for months at a time. Recently, in southern Utah, he stayed out for 6 months -- 3 months of which was living solely on the land with no packed-in foods. In a realistic primitive-living situation (the same situation that our ancient human ancestors found themselves in for more than 2 million years until the Neolithic era around 10,000 years ago) it has been my assertion that a person must procure animal foods to remain in good health. Not only that, but anybody in a primitive setting will crave the essential nutrients found only in meat and especially fat if they are out there long enough (animal forms of fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K). In other words, plants will not sustain any lengthy wilderness survival sojourn.

Keeping this in mind, I asked Matt how he sustained himself while in the wild. What foods did he eat? It was a very simple answer: most of his calories and nutrients came from trapped squirrels, rabbits, and rodents. He would eat watercress salads with other wild greens, as well minimal amounts of other wild plant foods. Yet animal foods were his main source of sustenance. When eating an animal, he ate the entire carcass (barring large bones, guts or fur). After cooking, he consumed the organ meats first, then the rest of the animal, crunching down any easily chewed bones along with it. When asked about fish in the area, Matt replied that he ate fish maybe one or two times a week -- no more than that, though. Why? Because he noticed that while he subsisted mostly off of fish he felt fatigued and not as strong as when consuming mainly squirrels. Apparently, the Apaches also avoided eating too much fish, according to Matt.

My guess as to why this would be (and Matt agreed) is that fish are not nearly as fat-rich as wild land mammals. Not only that, but I would add that fish consist of mainly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids and very little saturated fats. In a primitive living scenario where most of the calories are coming from animal flesh, it would seem important to get the right mix of fatty acids, including saturated fats, to meet the needs of the human body, which has a similar fatty acid content to pork: mostly saturated and monounsaturated. If starchy or sugary plant foods are available in abundance, then the body can make the saturated fatty acids it needs from those carbohydrates. But when only animal foods are being utilized -- which is more common than not in primitive living -- getting the wrong mix of fatty acids could cause problems in the long run.

I would hazard a guess, therefore, that Matt and the Apaches experienced fatigue from fish due to an over-abundance of mono and poly-unsaturated fats and a lack of saturated fats. This is important to understand because the body needs saturated fats to function properly and optimally. So, it would make sense that Matt felt better eating squirrels and rabbits than he did eating mostly fish, as the land mammals have a higher percentage of saturated and monounsaturated fats. It seems that these are the most likely fats that our human ancestors evolved on according to stable isotopic analyses of ancient bones which reveal a diet of terrestrial grazing animals and "freshwater foods" (the latter can indicate fish, shellfish, and/or waterfowl and other creatures that feed on aquatic plants and animals -- my guess is that waterfowl, with a more optimal fatty-acid profile, played a significant role in this type of food pattern).

Another intriguing tidbit that Matt offered me during our conversation was his discovery of -- and feasting on -- a deer carcass. It may have been left by a hunter or Matt himself may have trapped it -- I don't recall for certain. At any rate, he was able to procure a large deer carcass with plenty of meat and fat. When Matt came across this find, he had been living off of squirrels and rabbits and wild edibles for quite a while. He had lost a lot of weight, and he felt good in his leaner body, but he was unsure how long he could feel strong with his lower body fat percentages. The deer carcass provided him with much-needed calories, and he realized that he would have to take it easy and not gorge himself into indigestion and discomfort. Despite this intellectual acknowledgment, Matt ended up eating over ten pounds of meat and fat in one sitting. He exclaimed, "I thought I was going to feel horrible, but I felt great!" The meat was digested smoothly and efficiently, sparing him from losing more much-needed fat from his body.

Doctor, please don't poo-poo the Paleo diet!

A friend of mine forwarded an article to me about the paleo diet a while ago. It's a question and answer session in Oprah Magazine with a doctor named David Katz, MD. The article is called, "Should We Eat a Paleolithic Diet?" and it's flawed in many ways. See for yourself:

http://www.oprah.com/article/omagazine/200812_omag_katz_paleolithic

After reading the first few paragraphs, it is very apparent that the author is one of these politically-correct nutrition gurus that never seems to make a solid stand on anything except what mainstream nutritionists and dieticians recommend. Certainly not a breath of fresh air from all of the unfounded dietary recommendations that inundate the media. Following are points brought up in the article by Katz, along with my response.

Quote: "However, many anthropologists prefer describing our ancestors as gatherer-hunters because about two-thirds of their diet was plant based."

You begin to see from this quote that he has strong bias towards a plant-based diet for maintaining health. Two-thirds is a huge stretch, in my opinion. Studies of modern hunter-gatherers conflict with this information. Loren Cordain, one of the foremost researchers on the Paleolithic diet, has very solid data showing HG's eating a meat-based diet. (However, like this Katz guy, Cordain sells out to politically correct nutrition, claiming that HG's ate very little saturated fat and cholesterol.)

A great resource for paleo diet information, based on anthropological research can be found by doing a search for HL Abrams. This dude is on par, in my opinion.

Quote: " The flesh of antelope, which paleontologists believe most resembles the flesh our Stone Age ancestors would have eaten, has a very low fat content, roughly 16 percent of total calories. Contrast that with beef, which can be 30 percent fat or higher. Even more important is the quality of the fat. "

Typical ignorant viewpoint from a man who has most likely never butchered an animal. Fatty portions of an animal that HG's used include: bone marrow, back fat, cavity fat, tongue, kidney fat, intestinal fat, brains, and -- in some cases, when boiling bones for long periods -- bone grease. The fatty acid composition of muscle meat is irrelevant because HG's didn't only eat muscle meat -- they ate the whole animal!

By the way, much of an antelope's fat is actually quite high in saturated fatty acids. Not to mention *gasp!* cholesterol!

Quote: "Meat from animals that graze on grass contains a much higher proportion of polyunsaturated fat, including those heart-healthy omega-3s."

Notice he says grass-fed "meat" contains a higher proportion of polyunsaturated fat. Again, he neglects to mention all of the fat from the rest of the animal, which are dominated by saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. Not only that, but he is implying that polyunsaturates are the healthiest fats to consume. A big no-no, indeed, considering the studies done on test animals in which a high-polyunsaturated vegetable fat diet leads to death and disease. Also, factor in the lack of polyunsaturates in HG's diets when taking into account the entire animal.

Quote: "Our Stone Age ancestors lived to only about the age of 40—who knows how their health would have fared after 80 years of eating like this?"

Lifespan statistics are influenced by infant mortality rates, which were certainly higher before the advent of modern medicine due to environmental factors. For every set of bones from a paleo 80-year-old, an infant death -- being listed statistically as 0-years old -- will affect the average. The average of 80 and 0 is 40, correct? You can see how statisticians come to such silly conclusions. Also, factor in deaths from weapons and accidents. The fact is that there were elderly castes in many primitive cultures, such as the aborigines. I've heard anectodotal accounts from personal communications with modern Native American people claiming that their grandparents lived to be 100-years-old and beyond. I'm sure if I searched enough I could find some archaelogical evidence (dentition studies) of ancient peoples reaching such an age.

And, as for HGs health when they reach 80-years and beyond: if they still have all of their perfectly straight teeth and dense bones at 80, they're doing a hell of a lot better health-wise than us brace-face moderns. Ancient skulls would suggest that paleo people were optimally healthy (perfect teeth, fully-developed noggin) throughout their lives.

Quote: " The dietary plan I prefer to espouse is one supported by both anthropology and modern science: plenty of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains as a stand-in for the wild plants our ancestors ate, nuts and seeds, beans, seafood, lean meats, eggs, and low-fat or nonfat dairy."

Lord, have mercy! This guy isn't saying anything new -- just sticking to the same line of BS that we've been hearing since faulty, biased studies in the 50s and 60s "proved" that all disease is caused by fat and cholesterol. If this guy truly eats this way, he's got to be one hungry, fat-starved dude.

Our ancestors ate lean meat WITH FAT from all parts of the animal. Gathering plants is entirely impractical in many parts of the world. Hunting animals is the most energy-efficient way to attain nutrition in the wild (especially the all-important vitamins A & D from animal fats -- as documented by Weston Price -- and complete amino acids). We evolved on meat and fat with supplemental plants in season. And, in my opinion, this is what we are biologically suited for. Period.