Just thought I would share this abstract from the journal Nutrition that appeared in 2011. It attempted to determine paleolithic diets from modern hunter/gatherer diets. The conclusion remains: hunter/gatherers had a lower carb intake than the recommended "healthy" FDA diet.

Ströhle, A., Hahn, A. Diets of modern hunter-gatherers vary substantially in their carbohydrate content depending on ecoenvironments: Results from an ethnographic analysis (2011) Nutrition Research, 31 (6), pp. 429-435.

Nutrition Physiology and Human Nutrition Unit, Institute of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Leibniz University of Hannover, Hannover D-30167, Germany

Abstract
In the past, attempts have been made to estimate the carbohydrate contents of preagricultural human diets. Those estimations have primarily been based on interpretations of ethnographic data of modern hunter-gatherers. In this study, it was hypothesized that diets of modern hunter-gatherers vary in their carbohydrate content depending on ecoenvironments. Thus, using data of plant-to-animal subsistence ratios, we calculated the carbohydrate intake (percentage of the total energy) in 229 hunter-gatherer diets throughout the world and determined how differences in ecological environments altered carbohydrate intake. We found a wide range of carbohydrate intake (≈3%-50% of the total energy intake; median and mode, 16%-22% of the total energy). Hunter-gatherer diets were characterized by an identical carbohydrate intake (30%-35% of the total energy) over a wide range of latitude intervals (11°-40° north or south of the equator). However, with increasing latitude intervals from 41° to greater than 60°, carbohydrate intake decreased markedly from approximately equal to 20% to 9% or less of the total energy. Hunter-gatherers living in desert and tropical grasslands consumed the most carbohydrates (≈29%-34% of the total energy). Diets of hunter-gatherers living in northern areas (tundra and northern coniferous forest) contained a very low carbohydrate content (≤15% of the total energy). In conclusion, diets of hunter-gatherers showed substantial variation in their carbohydrate content. Independent of the local environment, however, the range of energy intake from carbohydrates in the diets of most hunter-gatherer societies was markedly different (lower) from the amounts currently recommended for healthy humans. © 2011 Elsevier Inc.

Am I the only one so thoroughly disgusted with Conventional Wisdom and Western Medicine?

This is getting beyond sick. Millions of people are dying because of the phallacies that "educated" people keep pushing as Gospel. It's tantamount to murder.

Wouldn't it be nice if studies like this one actually spurred other scientists to actually question current dietary gospel?

I know it can't and won't happen until a true tipping point is reached--both culturally and in academia--and that will probably take quite a while yet because those with vested interests in the status quo don't want to change (i.e., big pharma, agribusiness, etc). But it's sad that science and research is so closed to true research and questioning.

The bottom line is that up and coming researchers who want to either get a job in academia/research or survive in that world MUST conform to the popular dogma or risk losing their job (or not getting a job). Heck, if you don't adhere to your professor's viewpoint, you won't even get that doctorate you've been working on for years. Research funding does not go to people who propose studies that might expose flaws in current dogma; nor does it go to those who actively propose to look for conflicts and real answers.

It's stick to the party line or else. Gee...if it's this bad in medical science, ever wonder about other areas of science?

All the above, and there is a bias built in to what gets studied, as you know.

I did this stuff myself. It wasn't nutrition, it was about remote sensing, the science of understanding what satellites see (plants, water, how healthy is the vegetation, etc). Our research money came in block grants. If the NASA guy doing the study ever stopped writing grant proposals, the work stopped.

How to keep working? You write proposals to fit what people want to pay for. Thats what you study. I've done it myself.

I can see the same patterns in medical/nutrition. No one is putting money into simple answers like "We cant find a better diet than the one nature intended, so just do Paleo and stop buying all those drugs and books."

(02-21-2012 09:47 AM)DFH Wrote:  How to keep working? You write proposals to fit what people want to pay for. Thats what you study. I've done it myself.

Hear! Hear! I always laugh when I hear someone say "but its been published in a peer-reviewed journal so it must be correct [or true]" or "but it was a government-funded study so it must be unbiased..."

Sigh. It really is a case of follow the money and if you're not writing what either the funders or the publishers want to hear, you won't be funded or published. No publications, no tenure...and even tenure won't protect your job or reputation if you stray too far from the party line. True scientific questioning is really not encouraged or wanted in so many areas.

And of course then there's the weasels whose findings show one thing, but their conclusions totally ignore an important but "controversial" finding and they conclude what the funders/publishers want to hear. We all know how most people read studies: skim the abstract and skim the conclusion, skip the technical stuff in the middle. I'm grateful to Gary Taubes for so eloquently showing the discrepancy between findings and conclusions in so many current dietary studies.

I teach graduate research/methodology and my students get so frustrated with me when I make them analyze and critique the actual findings...but their frustration goes away when they start realizing that conclusions are often unrelated to the actual findings; amazement usually sets in at that point and most of them begin to question every study they see. When that happens, my job is done.

Yeah, this is kind've my soapbox....I'll put it away for now.

I see nothing has changed in 25 years then! The stuff I mentioned was in the mid 80s.

(02-11-2012 08:01 PM)fatboymuscleman Wrote:  Am I the only one so thoroughly disgusted with Conventional Wisdom and Western Medicine?

This is getting beyond sick. Millions of people are dying because of the phallacies that "educated" people keep pushing as Gospel. It's tantamount to murder.

Well there are plenty of examples of societies that lose contact with reality and go off on weird and destructive trips. Consensus reality can lead to real bummers.