Once upon a time almonds were poisonous, but we found some unpoisonous mutated ones and, between us and other animals, managed to domesticate them.

Cute!!......

Amen. Just another lazily-written opinion piece on a blog. If he was serious about being an authority in nutrition, he'd have done a bit of research and quoted the sources of the so-called myths. "The idea rose in popularity after Dr Eades posted (such-and-such) to his blog back in 2007," or something to that effect. Instead, he criticizes a lack of scientific reference... and then goes on to provide nothing but conjecture.

ITA with your point. Low carb is relative to the person. I eat upwards of 100 carbs per day and have steadily lost weight over the last 4 months. But I also work out 6 days a week, strength train, coach volleyball and field hockey, and do intermittent fasting. Eating 20 carbs a day wouldn't fuel me past 10:00 am. I think folks have to look at their lifestyle, body type, age, and overall health to determine not only the best diet, but the right amount of carbs for them.

Eades is always fun to read, and I have learned a fair bit from him. But he does not have a good grasp of science in general.

Well, yeah, but you have to draw the line somewhere. It's not as clear-cut as pregnancy, but somewhere. And we're not dealing with mere descriptive English here, "low-carbohydrate diet" is at least a semi-technical term, relativism makes things a little mucky. Terms like "carbohydrate-controlled" or "moderate-carbohydrate" might help increase understanding during discussion.

I sort of like the term "nutritional ketosis" in that for people targeting actual ketosis, it sidesteps this whole issue. A nutritionally ketogenic diet is just whatever diet keeps that person in nutritional ketosis, no matter what that diet is.

Wonderful post!

Two sides to every story:
http://www.beyondveg.com/billings-t...-fruit-1a.shtml

Wild / Natural Fruit
Small, high in fiber, often sour, bitter, or even astringent; rarely sweet; usually low sugar level.
Modern / Cultivated Fruit
Large, low in fiber, usually very sweet with a very high sugar level.

There is probably the truth somewhere in between,

It is my observation that fruit is not available all year, and therefore we humans have never evolved eating fruit regularly.

Fruit ripens right before the starvation season. In temperate zones the starvation season is winter, and in the tropics, it's the dry season.

Ripening fruit before the starvation season allows the fruit eating animals to fatten themselves up. Those with the sweetest sweet tooth tastes got the fattest and were able to survive on those reserves, therefore passing those sweet loving genes to their offspring.

Parts of Africa have a wicked dry season, so the fruit there has to have more sugar. Plus DNA evidence shows that everybody but the native sub-saharan Africans have some Neanderthal genes in our DNA, so we have the European ape that never saw those African fruits in our genes.

Living in the tropics I've seen fruit ripening season for the native and many of the cultivars. So much fruit that you can't possible eat it all. Oranges, mangoes, star fruit, and so on rotting on the ground or packed into UPS boxes for relatives 'up north' because everybody has more than they can possible eat. A month later, there is none to be found, and will not return for another year.

And I've seen a documentary on apples, and the heritage, wild apples in Kazakhstan is now considered a "dwarf apple" comparing it to modern apples. And DNA studies have pointed the origin of apples to these 'dwarf apples' in Kazakhstan.

The corn found by the setters in North America was also much smaller and less sweet than what we eat today. What we eat today is a hybrid and increasingly a Genetically Modified Organism.

We've been 'improving' the size and taste of plants by selective breeding ever since we discovered agriculture.

So I think there is validity in both sides of the debate. And I also know that year-round access to fruit is something humans have not had until very recent times, a speck in our evolutionary clock.

Bob

However, it has raised a good conversation here.......

It is not to be taken as a scientific research paper, but, I think, as a frame of mind for general reference.

For instance, I used to think that if only I could get all my heavy freinds and aquantences on LC woes, that they would be "cured" until I did a ton of research and found out that is not true. Maybe his last few sentences will put the thought that this is not true, in the minds of those who still think that way

It all goes back to how we are meant to eat and how nature evolves us and what we were meant to do before we evolved.

We lost weight in the winter due to lack of food. Spring, those of us that had enough fat and could store food the best got to live and reproduce. Summer and fall is for us to fatten up, weather is good, plants and animals are in abundance and we eat and get nice and fat like my Thanksgiving turkey and my horses. Winter comes back and our bodies are fueled off those fat resurves.

But we have screwed with that plan that worked at one time. We don't have famines any more and we have access to sugar all year round and its pushed. Not just fuit,but grains, fruits, veggies, tubers, its all there all year round for us to eat at our will.

I have canned apple sauce, jams, onions, tomatoes, corn this summer and fall so we can have it through the year. We aren't meant to have those foods all year around and in abundance.

I'm kind of leaning the same way. For instance, I get HUNGRY LIKE BEAR this time of year, like no other. I can see how advantageous it would be to have the ability to fatten up when food is plentiful, and live off it when food is not.

And, like sexym2 says, how would that work when the "food is not plentiful" part never happens...

Then what do we do with the "Everyone is different" statement if we are all basically the same? The argument does have a pleasing feel to it.

Well, whatever the truth is to this on a metabolic level, there's also personal preference to consider.

It's possible that almost anybody stranded with the Kitivans, forced to eat their diet, would have good results from that diet and life-style. Or anybody dropped into a traditional Inuit village, forced to give that a go. In the real world, unless you're enthusiastic about what you're trying to do, results are likely to be sub-par.

If somebody can't restrict calories and lose weight--if it just makes them miserable and hungry and lethargic, we in the low carb community just say duh! Why should we be less sympathetic if a person is just as miserable reducing carbs?

From your provided link and reply:

"Wild/Natural Fruit: Small, high in fiber, often sour, bitter, or even astringent; rarely sweet; usually low sugar level."

The link I provided presents a pretty convincing demonstration this is a patently false "truth", using both current day examples as well as macro-nutrient analyses. You have not provided a link to information clearly showing wild/natural fruit is "small, high in fiber, often sour, bitter or even astringent; rarely sweet; usually low in sugar level." when compared to cultivated fruits. Rather, you've linked to one man's opinion/"truth" he based on—what?—a reference citing sweet oranges don't grow wild and are from sour oranges + regurgitation of current dogma. Okie dokie.

If you start with a false premise, kinda hard to find your way to a right one. As such, I don't have the time to parse the rest of some dude's dogmatic opinion. If you do find a page with relevant information demonstrating wild/natural fruit exhibiting the proposed traits on actual analysis, I'd love to see it so feel free to link to such.

Just saying there are two sides to the story. If you think the pre-agricultural apples were as big and sweet as a giant red delicious, go for it.

I've seen the difference in strawberries in my own life time. They are now at least 3 times as big as they were when I was a child.

And of you don't believe that we have produced cultivars that are much larger and sweeter than their ancestors, that's OK with me too.

I believe that modern cultivars of most fruit and vegetables have been selectively bred to have bigger and/or sweeter edible parts. That's what the science of agriculture is all about. You don't have to agree.

I also believe that in the pre-agricultural era (most of our history as humankind) the sweet and starchy foods ripened right before the starvation season and that allowed us to get fat, which was a survival benefit for the coming starvation season. You don't have to agree.

There is a ton of information out there, and we all choose to believe what we want to.

Some believe that a low carb diet is dangerous, and there is enough out there to confirm that. There is also enough to confirm that a LC diet is healthy.

How do we really know for sure?

We don't. Anyone can put up a web page to either prove or disprove just about anything they want.

I do know one thing for sure. I'm in my late 60s, on zero prescription drugs, trim (but not slim), all my blood work (including HDL and LDL) is in the recommended range, I don't get sick (one mild cold every 5 years or so), most people tell me I look much younger (including the nurse at my doc's office where I get my annual physical), and even my eye doctor tells me my retinas and therefore immune system are those of someone 20 years younger than myself.

I've been extremely Low Carb since 2000, and I don't hardly ever eat fruit, and when I do, it's small quantities of low glycemic fruit.

So it works for me.

But as previously noted, we are all different. Some people get along well on a different WOE.

Bob