Metabolic psychiatry is IMHO the most exciting part of the field of metabolic health. Weight loss, putting diabetes/pre-diabetes, hypertension etc into remission such as in my case is mundane since we see it all the time now. Improving schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, multiple sclerosis, alzheimer's and parkinson's is absolutely incredible. These were diseases that I thought could not be improved!

Cooking seems to be orthogonal to the discussion of species classification.

I agree with your point but it is moot for current day. To a degree, there is a case to be made about reviewing how we classify humans as a species. Human beings have long exceeded the biological limitations imposed by evolution.

People are feeding cats synthetic plant based diets now, but we still classify cats as obligate carnivores based on their natural diet in their natural environment.

That is surprising by a good number of reasons. Thankfully, we've learned how to synthesize taurine but regardless I can't fathom how the critters can absorb protein and other nutrients from plant matter.

Hurray for science, I say.

And they didn't eat those things except as flavourings for their meat, medicines, or emergency food when the hunt failed.

Such a marginal consumption would not leave relevant record in fossil findings.

No one ate much plant matter except for the week when local fruit fruited until they settled into villages around farms when agriculture reached western Europe 4000 years ago.

There are enough findings pointing to the collection and consumption, by humans, going back to 100.000 year.

My ancestors are from that region, grain intolerance is common in that population as we haven't had it long. Cabbage is fine as we had that before we started farming it

Where? I'm in Portugal and there is no specific intolerance to grains in our population.

Brassica plants are harder to digest than cereals, even when cooked. Much of the fiber passes through the digestive tract untouched. The nutrients extracted from it are mostly water soluble and only after cooking.

Things are like that all over the world, people got agriculture 10kya (kiloyears ago) in Egypt through 200 years ago for the first contacted indigenous Australians, to not yet for some uncontacted tribes.

The indigenous populations of Australia already practiced a form of agriculture prior to colonial establishment in the region. Many areas used for that sort of farming was destroyed by the introduction of animals brought by europeans and that caused serious conflicts between the settlers and indigenous people.

The less time since introduction of high dosage of plants and the poisons they carry on introduction of agriculture the less will those populations handle those plants. And none of us handle them as well as a herbivore. At best you use extra vitamins and iron to detoxify the plants you eat, at worst you're intolerant.

I can't find it now but there is a protocol developed by early peoples and still used today, to a degree, to test new potential food sources. Early humans were not more stupid than we are today and no food source was added without careful experimentation.

I can't understand the use of "detoxify" in this context. Most potentially harmful substances in plants used for human consumption are usually removed through preparation and cooking. Genetic intolerances are not derived from toxic substances in the plants.

The only food reliably available in snowy conditions is meat

Majorly, yes. Other sources can be found but are not as calorie dense and the effort required to harvest it can make it calorie negative.

I specifically mentioned gorillas as the species is classified as predominantly herbivore, with fruits making up a very small percentage of their diet.

Fair point, i hadn't realized.

That would be the case if the species was intaking food raw, which is not the case. Cooking of food facilitates the access to nutrients in it, both for vegetable and animal source.

Cooking seems to be orthogonal to the discussion of species classification. People are feeding cats synthetic plant based diets now, but we still classify cats as obligate carnivores based on their natural diet in their natural environment.

Modern apes are still frugivores, about 20% of their diet comes from fermenting leaves, but its not a significant percentage.

I specifically mentioned gorillas as the species is classified as predominantly herbivore, with fruits making up a very small percentage of their diet.

If an extant species has this specific diet, it is at least plausible to conceive that ancestor species had it as well.

Humans are mono-gastrics, but not a hind-gut fermenter, the bulk of our nutrition by our but biology is going to be meat or fruit, and we can't live on fruit alone.

That would be the case if the species was intaking food raw, which is not the case. Cooking of food facilitates the access to nutrients in it, both for vegetable and animal source.

with gorillas being considered mostly herbivore, the same can be at least considered for ancestor species.

Modern apes are still frugivores, about 20% of their diet comes from fermenting leaves, but its not a significant percentage.

It a contentious point of view, but nothing has to die in order for me to subsist when eating eggs.

I see your moral stance, but in biology carnivore is a term of art describing the source of dietary inputs it has no moral component. Humans are mono-gastrics, but not a hind-gut fermenter, the bulk of our nutrition by our but biology is going to be meat or fruit, and we can't live on fruit alone.

That is quite the assumption, modern frugivore apes only eat leaves when fruit is scarce.

I had to go read up a bit on the ancestors of the apes and I admit I have to agree on that. But given today's extant species of apes have diverse diets in between them, with gorillas being considered mostly herbivore, the same can be at least considered for ancestor species.

Fair enough, i'm open to better terminology. Must eat some meat needs a term that isn't overloaded.

I agree but I'm not the one to offer such word. Unless, as a species, we were able to develop some sort of intrinsic mechanism to obtain the vital B12, we are bound by our biology to source it out. But even in our shortcoming, we have a smart mechanism: we can store the vitamin in our liver. In my understanding, that hints at a time where the molecule was a very scarce resource.

Eggs are not carnivorous food?

It a contentious point of view, but nothing has to die in order for me to subsist when eating eggs. In a more wild setting this is much more debateable, I'll concede.

The wild grains would have been very different from today's, though, and the plants would have been too.

Yes, for most of them. Today's carrots are very different from the original crops, as an easy example. Even the predominant colour wasn't as such until a couple of centuries ago.

Far less appetizing, I'd imagine.

Can we agree that is at best very subjective to answer?

It doesn't require much effort to find everyday food items that have changed wildly in its palatability over the course of one or two generations. Not processed foods; basic food items.

There is carbon/nitrogen isotope testing that shows that our distant predecessors also subsisted off roots and tubers.

And we still do. Our ancestors got that right. Potatoes, kassava and taro are good examples of that.

And they didn't eat those things except as flavourings for their meat, medicines, or emergency food when the hunt failed

No one ate much plant matter except for the week when local fruit fruited until they settled into villages around farms when agriculture reached western Europe 4000 years ago. My ancestors are from that region, grain intolerance is common in that population as we haven't had it long. Cabbage is fine as we had that before we started farming it

Things are like that all over the world, people got agriculture 10kya (kiloyears ago) in Egypt through 200 years ago for the first contacted indigenous Australians, to not yet for some uncontacted tribes.

The less time since introduction of high dosage of plants and the poisons they carry on introduction of agriculture the less will those populations handle those plants. And none of us handle them as well as a herbivore. At best you use extra vitamins and iron to detoxify the plants you eat, at worst you're intolerant.

The only food reliably available in snowy conditions is meat

The wild grains would have been very different from today's, though, and the plants would have been too. Far less appetizing, I'd imagine. There is carbon/nitrogen isotope testing that shows that our distant predecessors also subsisted off roots and tubers.

I don't have a point to make, just wondering out loud.

What medical concerns did Jet raise in this post?

The words Jet uses are used with the correct meaning: We are at the very least meso-carnivores, since we require meat in our diet, but can also consume plants. Since bio-availability of plant nutrition is low, it does appear that we aren't particularly well adapted to eating them. But we need not depend solely on animal sources, so we aren't exactly obligate carnivores, by definition.

Hence Jet's question.

You are yourself misinformed, I'm afraid. It's not possible to get scurvy this way. It'd be something interesting for you to read about on a weekend, perhaps.

It’s a safe assumption to consider early ancestors, prior to becoming land dwellers, had the largest portion of their diet based from leaves.

That is quite the assumption, modern frugivore apes only eat leaves when fruit is scarce

I refuse the insistence with humans being obligate carnivores

Fair enough, i'm open to better terminology. Must eat some meat needs a term that isn't overloaded.

Eggs are not meat. Eggs are an animal product, granted, but it’s not from its consumption we derive the notion of being carnivore.

Eggs are not carnivorous food?

There are more non-fruit bearing than there are fruit bearing trees. It's a safe assumption to consider early ancestors, prior to becoming land dwellers, had the largest portion of their diet based from leaves.

That's a keen observation. Prior to shifting from herbivores to scavengers, the apport of B12 would probably be obtained from specialized intestinal biome. Since evolution always comes with trade-offs, that was a loss in the long term.

I refuse the insistence with humans being obligate carnivores. Prior to becoming active predators, humans widened and improved their diet by including what they could scavenge from the landscape, including meat sourced from dead animals or abandoned predator kills. That is actively developing and evolving into omnivorous capabilty.

Eggs are not meat. Eggs are an animal product, granted, but it's not from its consumption we derive the notion of being carnivore.

Very inspiring. I feel it the natural way to do endurance workouts. Our ancestors did long runs in search of food and water.

Imo loading carbs, feeding during marathons is mostly for elite athletes who want to finish as fast as possible.

Which is prior to the rise of the first fixed settlements, from which agriculture started. During that period, humans survived off the land, hunting and gathering what they could. It is an established fact. Nonetheless, there have been findings supporting that prior to domestication, humans already gathered and consumed wild grains and other foods sourced from plants.

I am not a survival expert but I am aware there are food sources available throughout the entire year, for those who know it.

https://aussie.zone/comment/26005604

See the response to my earlier comment

Our ancestors started as herbivores, being tree dwellers, and only later changed into the role of scavenger and after that predator, making the consumption of other animals a viable and reliable food source.

Frugivores, but yes... in the intervening couple million years we lost the ability to survive without meat, we adapted to our new food environment. Humans are clearly not frugivores anymore.

The species evolved into the role of the omnivore, capable of eating nearly anything to survive, and it proved to be a winning strategy.

My point is we still need some meat to survive, we are obligated... so we are baseline obligate carnivores, and then opportunistic on other food sources. We can't eat nearly anything, grass for instance - happily there are animals that can eat grass, which we can eat.

If the concern is the apport of B12, eggs are a source for it and it would be an easy enough one for early humans to get it.

Eating eggs would be carnivorous behavior, no?

someone wants to get scurvy

If you want to get scurvy, you have to avoid meat. Despite the myth - fresh meat has vitamin c in it, it has been a historic CURE for scurvy. In a glucose free diet there is less competition for the glut4 transporter, which will take up the vitamin c... plus meat provides essential material the body would use vitamin c to produce... in a animal based diet there is less demand for vitamin c overall.

There is no documented case of someone contracting scurvy on a animal based diet, just consider the inuit who survive in the arctic circle without access to fresh fruit.

Sure, here you go -

Stopping or reducing dietary fiber intake reduces constipation and its associated symptoms

Fibre provides short chain fatty acids to some parts of the colon, but that isn't the only way to do so (ketones). Fibre is a net positive in diets that are unhealthy because it acts as a anti-nutrient blocking the absorption of food but if the diet is mostly poison this is a net positive.

saying fibre makes you constipated is like saying that protein stunts growth

I'm not great on sources, sorry. I read stuff, absorb it, forget the origin. I do recall the strength of the sources though, and both claims are backed by pretty strong sources, especially the fibre one. Cancer might be from first principles and plus the weakness of the evidence of cancer risk, which has problems in methods, but even with those problems only managed a hazard ratio of less than 2. Real effects typically have hazard ratios over 4

If you search in this community you'll probably find posts about each of those topics

You may need to read research papers as this is a pretty science heavy community

The YouTube videos posts are typically by MDs with clinical experience with keto and carnivore, most are pretty short, and all have AI summaries

@jet@hackertalks.com I think you know the more recent science on fibre, could you answer this human's comment that some national and university sites say fibre is important.

We were talking about constipation, but I expect the links to point at gut health

Note that there isn't much to gather in Europe during the last glaciation of the current ice age, or even in winter in general