Wildly differing traditional diets of various tribes: comments e.g. Gumby?

[Benko]

Theory is all well and good but one can create theoretical arguments for anything (and people have), so the stomach is this way so you should eat this and not this, is less persuasive to me then reality i.e. people have eaten this kind of diet and been free of traditional diseases (obviously correlation does not equal causation, so this is not perfect either but perhaps more reliable then e.g. global cooling fears in the 1970s and global warming fears since then). 

http://www.precisionnutrition.com/best-diet
--For example, the Arctic Inuit and African Masai eat traditional diets that are very high in fat and animal products with very few vegetables.

--Conversely, the Kitavans in the South Pacific eat traditional diets that are low in fat but very high in vegetables and starchy carbs.

--And the Tokelau near New Zealand eat traditional diets that are very high in saturated fats.

Crazy differences here…[bolding mine] yet all traditional diet eaters are relatively healthy people with minimal incidences of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, inflammatory obesity, etc. And this is only possible because the human body is amazingly adaptable to a host of different dietary conditions.

Not that Barardi is my gold standard, but he supports the common sense (to me and many) that different people can thrive on different diets.

Comments, anyone?

[Gumby]

It's totally true. Ancestral diets have ranged all over the map. The human body is very adaptable when it needs to be. However, nearly all ancestral diets are still high fat diets — even when they don't appear to be on the surface.

For instance, even the Kitavans were indirectly eating a high fat diet, since they eat a lot of coconuts (a pure saturated fat) and their excess carbs all break down into palmitic acid (a saturated fatty acid)...

Robb Wolf: The Kitavans eat a pretty high carbohydrate diet, but then the bulk of the carbohydrate actually gets converted into palmitic acid, and what they are metabolizing moment to moment is actually a high-fat diet.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Robb Wolf: It’s palmitic acid that’s being metabolized, a very stable saturated fat, which doesn’t cause any type of reactive oxygen species, it plugs into the mitochondria very nicely, it doesn’t cause any type of collateral damage, and so again it’s this kind of wacky, Alice in Wonderland-like kind of nonlinear kind of world where these folks are eating a significant amount of carbohydrates, that carbohydrate is getting converted into palmitic acid and subsequently burned as a fat source essentially. This stuff is at the mitochondrial level not registering as an oxidized carbohydrate, and so it all works within this kind of, you know, mitochondrial hormesis scenario where you’re both getting a carbohydrate load but also still maintaining the metabolic headroom that you want to burn fats as a fuel source. And what is happening is that these people are getting plenty of vitamin D, they’re getting, you know, non-significant amounts of gut irritants via grains and legumes, you know, good exercise level...

Mat LaLonde: To add to that, one of the reasons why the palmitic acid is not a problem in the Kitavans is because they don’t have insulin resistance, as is a problem in Western societies because it presents with insulin resistance in hyperinsulinemia specifically, which if you’ve got hyperinsulinemia you can’t burn that fat for fuel. It’s just being shoved into cells and stored and staying in the bloodstream and causing a variety of problems.

Chris Kresser: Right


Source: http://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-ske ... -episode-8

The Kitavans are high-carb (as safe starches: yam, sweet potato, taro, cassava), but very low omega-6, no wheat, low sugar, low food toxins, low oxidative stress, with some fish on most days and occasional pork. It's a Paleo-style diet with different up-front proportions and similar back-end results.

See also: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2 ... tavan.html
http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2 ... it-up.html

I think some people may look at the Kitavans and think that it's somehow proof that all types of carbs are fine. But, that isn't the case.