Book Review: Stuart McRoberts Brawn Series Book 1

If you want to gain strength and muscle mass, have not had success with conventional training approaches, don’t have a lot of time for training, and want to use the simplest, least expensive, most widely available progressive resistance training equipment––barbells, dumbbells, squat rack, chin up bar, parallel bars, and a flat bench––without getting injured in the process, Stuart McRobert has produced an excellent new guidebook for you: BRAWN Series, Book 1: How to Build up to 50 Pounds of Muscle the Natural Way.

This detailed guide to successful strength training and muscle gaining for the average trainee discusses in detail McRobert’s updated application of one of the most effective training routines in history, the high rep squat program once championed by Peary Rader, the founder of Iron Man Magazine.

McRobert himself used a version of this routine to add 60 pounds of mass to his own frame and deadlift 400 pounds for 20 consecutive repetitions.  McRobert apparently learned about the routine from Rader, who used a very simple version of the high-rep squat routine to gain about 50 pounds and become a mid-western U.S.A. heavyweight lifting champion eight years in a row, after spending more than 12 years trying many other approaches to gain strength and mass with no success.

The Brawn Book 1 (hereafter BB1) will introduce you to the history of this effective program, and show you how to apply it sustainably and successfully.  A key benefit of this book lies in McRobert's recognition that some people need an alternative to the barbell squat because of body proportions or previous injuries.  He provides valuable guidance to help you decide whether you can use the squat or need an alternative to the barbell squat. 

He explains why and how to prepare for the routine, how to select the lynch-pin movements that will work best for you, how long to apply it, how to enhance recovery from training sessions and a period of applying the routine, how often to implement it, and how to train when you aren’t doing the high-rep squat routine. 

This book also has 93 pages explaining stretching and resistance exercise technique in great detail, so that you don’t make mistakes that will cost you time and money recovering from injuries.  In this vein, BB1 differs from Rippetoe’s Starting Strength in some laudable ways.  Rippetoe recommends explosive power cleans and full-range straight-bar deadlifts, two exercises that present an unreasonable injury risk for many people of average natural build.  Although McRobert himself succeeded in deadlifting 400 pounds for 20 consecutive repetitions, he suffered a significant injury from this effort, and because of his own experience, along with other considerations, he doesn’t recommend full-range straight-bar powerlifting deadlifts.  Instead, he recommends the trap-bar deadlift, or deadlifts from knee level, both much safer variations, to people of the appropriate build.

I do have some reservations about BB1.  One regards one aspect of the training advice.  For all routines, McRobert recommends just one set of the lynchpin exercise––the barbell squat or an individually appropriate alternative––but for almost all other exercises in the routines he recommends at least two sets.  If one set is adequate for the lynchpin exercise, why do we need multiple sets for the others?  Doing multiple sets increases the time required to do a routine, and I don't think we have really good evidence that this extra time investment is worthwhile.  As explained at ExRx.net:

"Many scientific studies demonstrate one set is almost effective as multiple sets, if not just as effective in strength and muscle hypertrophy (Starkey, Pollock, et. al. 1996). These studies have been criticized for using untrained subjects. Hass et. al. (2000) compared the effects of one set verses three sets in experienced recreational weightlifters. Both groups significantly improved muscular fitness and body composition during the 13 week study. Interestingly, no significant differences were found between groups for any of the test variables, including muscular strength, muscular endurance, and body composition...

"By performing an additional set (50% to 100% more sets) only 0 to 5% more progress will be observed. Each additional set yields even less progress to a point of diminishing return. The time saved with an abbreviated weight training program can often be used more wisely elsewhere in a program. More aerobics should be performed if fat loss, toning, or cardiovascular conditioning is a goal. Duration is a more important component with aerobics exercise. Alternatively, more sports-specific training can be performed if improvement of athletic ability is a goal. In addition, more rest can be take between sets if strength is a goal. Finally, more time can be spent recuperating after workouts, decreasing the stagnant or injurious effects of overtraining."

Fisher et al (full text pdf) reviewed the evidence to produce evidence-based resistance training guidelines. and found "that appreciably the same muscular strength and endurance adaptations can be attained by performing a single set of ~8-12 repetitions to momentary muscular failure, at a repetition duration that maintains muscular tension throughout the entire range of motion, for most major muscle groups once or twice each week."  Thus, while I agree with the general outline of the BB1 routines, I would suggest performing only one set of each exercise in any session, and only one session per week.

Also, before undertaking this type of intensive training, especially if you are older or have had previous injuries, I recommend that you make sure that you have a well-aligned musculoskeletal system.  For this purpose I suggest start by reading The Egoscue Method of Health Through Motion: Revolutionary Program That Lets You Rediscover the Body's Power to Rejuvenate It.  This book will help you identify and correct postural imbalances that will predispose you to injuries in training.  I have learned the hard way––through repeated injury–– that you must correct these imbalances, and achieve what Egoscue calls "D-Lux" musculoskeletal alignment, before engaging in intensive training. 

I disagree with the some of the nutritional advice McRobert offers, as it centers around consuming one to 1.25 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight, mostly from animal products, and using fermented milk products.  Following this recommendation, a 150 pound (68 kg) trainee would consume 150 to 190 g of protein per day. McRobert claims that “Too much protein is better than not enough­­––excess isn’t a problem provided you’re healthy.”

I don’t agree with this prescription, because I am aware of no evidence indicating that any healthy human requires a protein intake of that magnitude to support resistance training, and sufficient evidence to indicate that excess animal protein does cause health problems. 

A careful metabolic study by Lemon et al found that novice bodybuilders had a protein requirement of 1.4 to 1.5 gram per kilogram bodyweight daily during intensive training.  This means that a 150 pound novice trainee in intensive training would require about 102 grams of protein daily (only about 0.7 g per pound), which would be about 14% of total energy.

This is remarkably similar to the protein requirement of a human infant.  A  human infant will double its body mass in its first six months of life.  The protein RDA for an infant aged 0 to 0.5 years is 1.5 grams per kilo (0.7 grams per pound) of body mass per day. Human breast milk provides only five to six percent of calories as protein, yet easily supplies the required amount of protein, which for an infant is only about 10 grams of total protein per day.  Human milk illustrates that the main requirement for growth is a high calorie diet; and when you eat a high calorie diet, you will naturally ingest a larger amount of protein.

However, I have previously blogged  about a study by Moore et al  which showed that 12 weeks of resistance training increases the efficiency of protein utilization, thus probably reducing protein requirements.  Also, Castaneda et al reported that 55 to 75 year old kidney disease patients eating a low protein diet of 0.6 g/kg bodyweight/day increased muscle cross-sectional area by 23% in 12 weeks. 

As I wrote in that blog:

“Human muscle consists of ~70% water, ~30% protein by weight.  The Moore et al subjects added ~33 g of lean mass daily, equating to adding ~10 g of protein to their musculature daily.

The Moore et al subjects averaged 62 kg of lean mass at the start of the study and 65 kg at the end. [4]

Using the estimated protein requirement of 0.83 g/kg/d [3], ninety-eight percent of individuals starting this program at 62 kg (136 lb) of lean mass would require not more than 50 g of protein per day.  After gaining 2.8 kg (6 pounds) of lean mass, the individual would have 65 kg (143 lb) of lean mass and a protein requirement of not more than 52 g per day.  During the training period, he would require an additional 10 g of protein per day (to accrue 33 g of lean mass daily).  Thus, from start to end, I would estimate his protein requirement as no higher than 60-62 g per day.

Using the median protein requirement of 0.65 g/kg/d, possibly fifty percent of individuals in the Moore study would require no more than 50 g of protein per day to achieve the results reported.

Since Moore et al report the habitual and controlled protein intake of these subjects as falling between 109 and 125 g per day, by my calculations, the people in this study may have consumed 40 to 60 g excess protein every day, beyond the requirement for building 6 pounds of lean mass in 12 weeks.

According to Moore et al, their 12 subjects required and consumed about 3000 kcal per day. Sixty-two grams of protein provides 248 kcal, which constitutes eight percent of total energy intake.  It would seem possible then that adult physically active humans are adapted to food sources that provide about 8 percent of calories as protein, assuming carbohydrate requirements are met directly rather than through gluconeogenesis.”

In How Much Protein?, Brad Pilon reviewed dozens of studies of the influence of protein intake on strength and muscle development, and found that the research suggests an intake of 70 to 120 grams of protein daily is adequate, with no discernible difference between animal and vegetable sources of proteinz.  

Thus, McRobert is recommending an intake of protein at least 50 to 90 percent greater than necessary.  Considering the high cost of animal products, this unnecessarily increases the cost of the diet, and if composed of animal protein, presents a health risk.

Over the short term, several studies have shown that intake of a diet rich in animal protein increases calcium excretion to produce a negative calcium balance, even when calcium intake amounted to about 1400 mg per day [1, 2, both full text]. 

Thus, diets high in animal protein probably deplete bone mineral, an effect contrary to the goal of body-building.  Many people bone mass loss is a concern only for women, but according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation:

• Up to one in four men over age 50 will break a bone due to osteoporosis.
• Approximately two million American men already have osteoporosis. About 12 million more are at risk.
• Men older than 50 are more likely to break a bone due to osteoporosis than they are to get prostate cancer.
• Each year, about 80,000 men will break a hip.
• Men are more likely than women to die within a year after breaking a hip. This is due to
  problems related to the break.

Few men realize that they are more likely to have a bone fracture due to osteoporosis than they are to get prostate cancer.

A diet high in animal protein will also tend to be high in arachidonic acid, which promotes various cancers, including breast, prostate, and colon.

Regarding cow milk products, numerous investigators have linked it to breast and prostate cancer.

Tate et al report that “Cows' milk stimulated the growth of LNCaP prostate cancer cells in each of 14 separate experiments, producing an average increase in growth rate of over 30%. In contrast, almond milk suppressed the growth of these cells by over 30%.”

This year, Torfadottir et al reported that “Daily milk consumption in adolescence (vs. less than daily), but not in midlife or currently, was associated with a 3.2-fold risk of advanced prostate cancer.”

Raimondi et al reported “We found a twofold increased risk of prostate cancer associated with an increased intake of dairy products.”

Milk may also promote breast cancer.  Su et alreported finding that “Adolescent total milk intake was positively associated with proliferative BBD [benign breast disease]” which is a precursor to breast cancer.

Qin et al found “the consumption of milk promoted the development of DMBA-induced mammary tumors in rats independent of the fat level.” i.e. both low and high fat milk promoted breast cancer growth.

In another study of low fat milk and cancer, Qin et al found that “commercially available low-fat milk promotes the development of DMBA-induced mammary tumors in rats. The degree of the promotion is almost comparable to that of 0.1 microg/ml estrone sulfate. The high estrogen content in the milk may be responsible for the promotional effects, acting in concert with other hormones such as IGF-I.”

Milk is naturally high in estrogens, removing fat from milk doesn't remove the estrogens, and modern dairy practices increase the estrogen contents of milk to unprecedented levels. 

Since a mammal only lactates after a pregnancy, to maximize continuous milk production, dairy producers subject cows to mechanical rape (that’s what we call involuntarily insemination when it is done to humans) often enough to keep them almost continually pregnant.  This results in them lactating while pregnant, when hormones are particularly high.  This raises the true mammalian estrogen and progesterone contents of the milk.  

Maruyama, Oshima, and Ohyama reported that humans consuming modern cow milk from pregnant cows have significant and disturbing elevations in estrogen levels and declines in testosterone levels that affect ovarian function and sexual maturation:

“After the intake of cow milk, serum estrone (E1) and progesterone concentrations significantly increased, and serum luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone and testosterone significantly decreased in men. Urine concentrations of E1, estradiol, estriol and pregnanediol significantly increased in all adults and children. In four out of five women, ovulation occurred during the milk intake, and the timing of ovulation was similar among the three menstrual cycles.

"CONCLUSIONS:

"The present data on men and children indicate that estrogens in milk were absorbed, and gonadotropin secretion was suppressed, followed by a decrease in testosterone secretion. Sexual maturation of prepubertal children could be affected by the ordinary intake of cow milk.”

Get that:  Men drinking milk or eating milk products (yoghurt, cheese, etc.) can expect an increase in estrogen levels and a decrease in testosterone levels. 

Milk may also promote colon cancer.  Van der pols et al found that “High childhood total dairy intake was associated with a near-tripling in the odds of colorectal cancer”

Besides putting your own health at risk, a diet high in animal products causes death, injury, and suffering to the animals eaten, and also to numerous workers in slaughterhouses and meat-packing plants, who have The Most Dangerous Job In America. 

Also, the intensive animal farming necessary for providing modern nations a diet high in animal products is a main driver of water shortages, soil erosion, intensive monocropping of corn and soybeans, and accumulation of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.  According to David Pimental, Ph.D., professor of ecology in Cornell University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences:

• Livestock eat more grain than humans. "The 7 billion livestock animals in the United States consume five times as much grain as is consumed directly by the entire American population."
• Feeding grains to livestock wastes protein. "Each year an estimated 41 million tons of plant protein is fed to U.S. livestock to produce an estimated 7 million tons of animal protein for human consumption. For every kilogram of high-quality animal protein produced, livestock are fed nearly 6 kg of plant protein."
• Livestock production wastes fossil fuels. "On average, animal protein production in the U.S. requires 28 kilocalories (kcal) for every kcal of protein produced for human consumption. Beef and lamb are the most costly, in terms of fossil fuel energy input to protein output at 54:1 and 50:1, respectively. Turkey and chicken meat production are the most efficient (13:1 and 4:1, respectively). Grain production, on average, requires 3.3 kcal of fossil fuel for every kcal of protein produced. The U.S. now imports about 54 percent of its oil; by the year 2015, that import figure is expected to rise to 100 percent."
• Livestock systems drive water shortages.  "U.S. agriculture accounts for 87 percent of all the fresh water consumed each year. Livestock directly use only 1.3 percent of that water. But when the water required for forage and grain production is included, livestock's water usage rises dramatically. Every kilogram of beef produced takes 100,000 liters of water. Some 900 liters of water go into producing a kilogram of wheat. Potatoes are even less "thirsty," at 500 liters per kilogram." "Water shortages already are severe in the Western and Southern United States and the situation is quickly becoming worse because of a rapidly growing U.S. population that requires more water for all of its needs, especially agriculture."
• Livestock production increases land use. "More than 302 million hectares of land are devoted to producing feed for the U.S. livestock population -- about 272 million hectares in pasture and about 30 million hectares for cultivated feed grains." [These lands could be returned to wild if we stopped raising livestock.]
• Livestock product drives soil erosion. "About 90 percent of U.S. cropland is losing soil -- to wind and water erosion -- at 13 times above the sustainable rate. Soil loss is most severe in some of the richest farming areas; Iowa loses topsoil at 30 times the rate of soil formation. Iowa has lost one-half its topsoil in only 150 years of farming -- soil that took thousands of years to form."
• "If all the U.S. grain now fed to livestock were exported and if cattlemen switched to grass-fed production systems, less beef would be available and animal protein in the average American diet would drop from 75 grams to 29 grams per day. That, plus current levels of plant-protein consumption, would still yield more than the RDA for protein."

When attempting to gain muscle, one requires more calories than one expends, and slightly more protein than a person not training, but you don’t have to drink milk or eat animals to accomplish this. Foods providing at least 10 percent of calories as protein include:

Oatmeal, 15%

Whole wheat, 15%

Cornmeal, 9%

Beans, 27%

Peas, 28%

Asparagus, 42%

Broccoli, 42%

Mushrooms, 32%

Spinach, 51%

Yeast, 53%

Most young males need to ingest at least 3000 kcal per day to gain lean mass.  Here’s an example of a 3200 kcalorie vegan diet that supplies 133 g of protein without any special emphasis on protein-rich foods.  If we assume that people need 1.4 g/kg/d protein to build muscle mass, this is adequate for a 95 kg (209 lb) individual.

Here’s the macronutrient analysis: 

And here is the micronutrient analysis; it is low only in vitamin D, which we get from sun exposure (the vitamin B12 in this diet comes from fortified soy milk).

Hence it is clear that one can obtain plenty of protein for muscle growth from a diet containing no animal products, so long as one eats adequate calories.

In summary, I recommend Stuart McRobert's  new BRAWN Series, Book 1: How to Build up to 50 Pounds of Muscle the Natural Way as source of general training guidance, with a few modifications, but I don’t recommend following his nutrition guidance. 

Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Richard Wrangham presents a compelling argument that the primary nutritional change driving human evolution from small-brained Homo habilis to large-brained Homo sapiens was cooking––not meat-eating.

Wrangham starts off with some critical observations:  No known human tribe lives on a predominantly raw food diet, and those modern people who attempt to live on a largely raw food diet have demonstrated difficulties maintaining body mass, energy levels, and fertility.  This points to the hypothesis that modern humans are actually "adapted to eating cooked food in the same essential way as cows are adapted to eating grass, or fleas to sucking blood, or any other animal to its signature diet.  We are tied to our adapted diet of cooked food, and the results pervade our lives, from our bodies to our minds.  We humans are the cooking apes, the creatures of the flame."

Traditional Chinese medicine has for milennia maintained that humans need to eat cooked food to get adequate food energy (Pinyin: gu qi).  In The Tao of Healthy Eating, traditional Chinese physician Bob Flaws writes:

"Traditional Chinese medicine suggests that most people, most of the time, should eat mostly cooked food.  Cooking is predigestion on the outside of the body to make food more easily digestible on the inside.  By cooking foods in a pot on the outside of the body, one can initiate and facilitate the stomach's rottening and ripening in its pot on the inside of the body.  cold and raw foods require that much more energy to transform them into warm soup within the pot of the stomach.  Since it takes energy or qi to create this warmth and transformation, the net profit from this transformation is less.  Whereas, if one eats cooked foods, less qi is spent in the process of digestion.  This means that the net profit of digestion, i.e. qi or energy, is greater."

This perspective contradicts the common belief that raw food is better than cooked because cooking can destroy nutrients.  But as Flaws points out,  net nutrient delivery matters more than gross amount of nutrient in the raw food.  Let's assume that a carrot has 10 units of X nutrient, but only 10% of it is available to humans because it is locked in an largely indigestible cellulose envelope.  Let's say that cooking destroys 50% of that nutrient (a gross overestimation for proper cooking), but increases the availability to 50%.  The net delivery of X from the raw carrot is 1 unit, but the net from the cooked carrot is 2.5 units. 


Wrangham presents multiple lines of evidence that humans and non-humans have a greater net macronutrient absorption from cooked than from raw foods, resulting in cooked foods delivering more energy than raw foods.

Wrangham includes some of the research I discussed in my series on raw vegan diet, which found that a high proportion of people eating diets high in raw foods (70% or more raw) are underweight and have low fertility.   Belgian researchers showed that humans can digest only about 65% of the protein in raw eggs, but 91-94% of the protein from cooked eggs. [1] Another team showed that enzymatic  digestion of heated beef protein increased by four times over raw beef protein. [2] This occurs because cooking denatures protein more effectively than stomach acid, making it more vulnerable to enzymatic digestion.

Wrangham's hypothesis competes with the Man-The-Hunter hypothesis which maintains that humans evolved big brains and small guts by route of increased meat-eating.   However, Wrangham points out that the hunting hypothesis can't account for some of the facts. Increased meat-eating might explain the transition from Australopithecines to Homo habilis (habilines), but not the transition from the habilines to Homo erectus:

"Meat-eating accounts smoothly for the first transition, jump-starting evolution toward humans by shifting chimpanzeelike australopithecines into knife-wielding, bigger-brained habilines, while still leaving them with apelike bodies capable of collecting and digesting [raw] vegetable foods as efficiently as did australopithecines.  But if meat eating explains the origin of the habilines, it leaves the second transition unexplained, from habilines to Homo erectus.  Did habilines and Homo erectus obtain their meat in such different ways that they evolved different kinds of anatomy?  Some people think the habilines might have been primarily scavengers while Homo erectus were more proficient hunters.  The idea is plausible, though archaeological data do not directly test it.  But it does not solve a key problem concerning the anatomy of Homo erectus, which had small jaws and small teeth that were poorly adapted for eating the tough raw meat of game animals.  These weaker mouths cannot be explained by Home erectus's becoming better at hunting.  Something else must have been going on."

Increased meat eating can't explain whey we have such small mouths and jaws. 

"Given that the mouth is the entry to the gut, humans have an astonishingly tiny opening for such a large species....To find a primate with as relatively small an aperture as that of humans, you have to go to a diminutive species, such as a squirrel monkey weighing less than 1.4 kilograms (3 pounds). In addition to having a small gape, our mouths have a relatively small volume––about the same size as chimpanzee mouths, even though we weigh some 50 percent more than they do.  Zoologists often try to capture the essence of our species with such phrases as the naked, bipedal, or big-brained ape.  They could equally well call us the small-mouthed ape."

Compare the jaws of any raw food eating animal to human jaws.  The largely vegetarian chimp has a gape much larger than that of a human:

Source:  Junglewalk

The carnivorous cat has a gape nearly half the size of its head, and the jaws are very powerful for cutting through raw meat. 

You can see some other big yawns here.  Compare to the modern human gape:

Source:  Flikr

Humans have a small mouth for such a large head.  The larger gape of other species is not for taking in large bites, it is necessary for leverage to crush tough, chewy raw foods. 

By the way, although Wrangham does not mention it, the shrinkage and reorganization of the mouth laid the foundation for speech.  Thus, we may owe our linguistic abilities to the mastery of fire and cooking.  I seem to recall reading that another anthropologist had proposed this hypothesis more than 20 years ago, but I no longer have the book that had the reference.

If evolution from Homo habilis to Homo erectus had been driven by increased consumption of raw meat, with technology and cooking as an afterthought, we would expect to have seen it maintain the large powerful ape mouth and jaws, retained the large, sturdy teeth, and increased the shearing action for adaptation to meat eating.  Instead, from the habilines to the erectines the mouth and teeth shrank.

Here's a habiline skull:

Source: www.anhb.uwa.edu.au/.../ skulls/s10_homo_habilis

And here's an erectine skull:

Source: www.ma.krakow.pl

The erectine jaw and teeth are much smaller relative to body size.  Erectines had a smaller gape and must have had a softer diet than the habilines.  The skeletal remains provide the best available evidence that some tribe of Homo habilis discovered something that made for a much softer and energy-rich diet, giving rise to Homo erectus. 

One might think that the use of knives and hammers alone selected for smaller mouths.  Perhaps habilines simply cut the meat into small pieces or pounded it tender.  Although initially plausible, on further examination, this loses credibility, because it can't explain how an animal adapted to a diet consisting predominantly of raw vegetation can continue eating that vegetation while adapting to the raw meat portion of the diet.

Wrangham notes that "Peter Lucas has calculated that the size of a tooth needed to make a crack in a cooked potato is 56 percent to 82 percent smaller than needed for a raw potato."  Thus, so long as human ancestors continued to eat raw plants, they needed large teeth and jaws.  And they definitely needed to eat plants.

"The problem is that tropical hunter-gatherers have to eat at least half of their diet in the form of plants, and the kinds of plant foods our hunter-gatherer ancestors would have relied on are not easily digested raw.

Tropical wild game simply does not provide adequate amounts of fat or carbohydrate to prevent excessive intake of protein resulting in ammonia and urea accumulation, especially in the annual dry seasons, when the whole carcass fat levels of game will drop as low as 1 percent to 2 percent.
 
By the way, Wrangham notes:

"Starchy foods make up more than half of the diets of tropical hunter-gatherers today and may well have been eaten in similar quantity by our human and pre-human ancestors in the African savannas."

Moreover, if raw meat was a staple of our ancestors, we would expect modern humans to have some significant resistance to toxins produced by bacteria that infect raw meat.  But we are still vulnerable to those bacterial toxins.

In addition, there is a major economic problem with the meat-eating hypothesis.  Wrangham has studied chimps directly, watching them hunt and eat.  The typical chimp has to spend about 6 hours daily chewing its bulky, chewy raw foods.  They hunt opportunistically, but will only spend 15 to 20 minutes on a hunt.  If not successful in that time frame, they give up and return to eating plants.  Why?

Wrangham explains that because digestion of raw food takes more time than digestion of cooked food and costs a lot of energy, a chimp has to devote eight or nine hours daily to feeding in order to get adequate energy.  Australopithecines and habilines probably had similar constraints.  This would have prevented them from investing much time in hunting:

"Males who did not cook would not have been able to rely on hunting to feed themselves.  Like chimps, they could hunt in opportunistic spurts.   But if they devoted many hours to hunting, the risk of failure to obtain prey could not be compensated rapidly enough.  Eating their daily required calories in the form of their staple plant foods would have taken too long."

As Wrangham explains, a division of labor into hunting and gathering would not solve this problem, so long as the food was consumed raw.

"Suppose that a hunter living on raw food has a mate who is willing to feed him, that his mate could collect enough raw foods for him (while satisfying her own needs) and would bring them back to a central place, to be met by her grateful mate.  Then suppose the male has had an unsuccessful day of hunting....The hungry hunter needs to consume, say, two thousand calories, but he cannot eat after dark.  To do so would be too dangerous, scrabbling in the predator-filled night to feel for the nuts, leaves, or roots his gatherer friend brought him.  If the hunter slept on the ground, he would be exposed to predators and large ungulates as he fumbled for his food.  If he were in a tree, he would find it hard to have his raw foods with him because they do not come in tidy packages.  

"So to eat his fill he would have to do most of his eating before dusk, which falls between about 6 and 7 P.M. in equatorial regions.  If he had eaten nothing while on the hunt, he would need to be back in camp before midday, and there he would find his mate's gathered foods 9assuming she had been able to complete her food gathering so early in the day).  He would then have to spend the rest of the day eating, resting, eating, resting, and eating.  In short, the long hours of chewing necessitated by a raw diet would have sharply reduced hunting time.  It is questionable whether the sexual division of labor would have been possible at all.

"The use of fire solved the problem.  It freed hunters from previous time constraints by reducing the time spent chewing.  It also allowed eating after dark.  The first of our ancestral line to cook their food would have gained several hours of daytime. Instead of being an opportunistic activity, hunting could have become a more dedicated pursuit with a higher potential for success.  Nowadays men can hunt until nightfall and still eat a large meal in camp.  After cooking began, therefore, hunting could contribute to the full development of the family household, reliant as it is on a predictable economic exchange between women and men."

 In short, cooking (and other culinary technologies that make food softer and easier to digest) made it possible for humans to pursue increased meat-eating.  It freed men from the need to continuously feed on plant foods, giving them time to devote to hunting meat. 

Simply put, cooked food delivers more energy and nutrition in a smaller, more easily digested package than raw food.  Wrangham argues that since Homo erectus had a larger brain and a much smaller face, mouth and teeth than Homo habilis, probably some tribe of Homo habilis first controlled fire and used it for cooking.  The resulting increase in energy and nutrient availability led to rapid selection for smaller guts and larger brains and bodies.  By providing protection from nocturnal predators, control of fire also enabled human ancestors to give up tree-dwelling.  It also supported the sexual division of labor (hunting and gathering/cooking) present in human cultures.

Wrangham's Catching Fire will provide plenty of food for thought for anyone interested in ancestral nutrition. 

Art DeVany and Robb Wolf Promoting Paleo Diet On Nightline

Doing S.P.E.E.D.: A Paleo-Friendly Weight Loss Manual

If you are looking for a well-researched and comprehensive approach to weight management that gives paleo-friendly diet guidance, but more importantly addresses the main reasons people fail to achieve body composition goals, which lie in the mind, not the body, I highly recommend picking up a copy of S.P.E.E.D. by Jeff Thiboutot M.S., C.N. and Matt Schoeneberger M.S., C.E.S.

Jeff and Matt have squarely addressed the reality that although no one can achieve fat loss without an appropriate diet, the real challenge lies in sticking with that diet for long enough (essentially a life time) to achieve and maintain the desired body composition. They present a comprehensive, evidence-based approach to weight management based on what they call the bio-psycho-social model.  

This model maintains that “The regulation of fat tissue and the resulting amounts that people have are influenced, directly or indirectly, by biological, psychological, and sociological factors” (p. 16).  Simply, this means that not only biological, but also cognitive, social, and environmental factors all influence hunger, appetite, and eating, so that a comprehensive approach to long-term weight management must address physiological, psychological, social, and environmental influences.

In their first chapter on What Is a Healthy Weight?, they discuss what exactly constitutes a healthy body composition.   After a review of the evidence they conclude that very low body fat may not actually confer improved health; as they put it, “having ‘six pack abs’ has NOT been shown to confer any health benefits” (p.17).   However, a high level of visceral fat does appear to negatively affect health, so “it’s in your best interest to maintain your weight (BMI, waist circumference, and body fat%) within a healthy range.”

S.P.E.E.D. stands for Sleep, Psychology, Exercise, Environment, and Diet.  Chapter 2 reviews the substantial evidence that sleep deprivation affects appetite, blood leptin and glucose levels, insulin resistance, and energy expenditure, and gives guidance to achieve a better night’s sleep.

Chapter 3 covers psychology, which as Jeff and Matt say on the cover of the book, “your mindset matters the most.”  Like other chapters, it begins with a list of things to do:

Have a compelling vision.  Set S.M.A.R.T. goals.  Increase your level of self-efficacy.  Journal. Get timely feedback.  Cultivate a more rational and flexible thinking pattern.  Get help from others.  Define your obstacles and find ways to overcome them.  Keep stress levels down.

The rest of the chapter explains why and how to do these things as a part of a program to improve or maintain a healthy body composition.  It includes such things as how to effectively set goals, how to use reason to counter negative, self-defeating thought patters, and why journaling can help you stay on course.  I particularly liked their bringing to light the evidence for the efficacy of hypnotherapy and self-hypnosis (induction of altered states of consciousness) as a part of a goal-oriented program.  All native tribes knew of the power of hypnotic trance and used it as part of their  shamanic practices directed toward health enhancement.  I believe it works because it engages powers that lie deep within the human psychophysiological complex that connect with what I have called primal wisdom, an intelligence built in to the system through millenia of evolution.

Chapter 4 covers exercise.  Jeff and Matt review the evidence for efficacy of resistance, aerobic, and high intensity interval training (HIIT).   They correctly report the evidence which is that "exercise" is way over-rated as a method for weight loss (largely because you can easily consume in a few minutes all the energy you burn in 30+ minutes of "exercise").  They conclude that “resistance training is the foundation of your program, and everything else is additional,” since the evidence supports resistance training as the best way to maintain lean mass as you lose body fat by appropriate diet.

Chapter 5 discusses the effects of the eating environment on food intake.   Research has shown that social and environmental factors (such as plate size and shape, room temperature, lighting, food variety, presence of others, and so on) can play a considerable role in affecting the quantity and quality of food consumed.  The goal of this chapter  is to show the reader how “to purposefully arrange your environment so that it will be easier to stick to your eating plan” (p. 75).

Chapter 6 gets to diet.  Jeff and Matt advocate a low carbohydrate, medium protein, high fat diet such as I follow, and one thing I really like about their approach is that they firmly maintain, correctly, that to achieve weight loss you must incorporate a 20-40% reduction of calorie intake by either reducing daily food intake or intermittent fasting.  They deftly debunk several myths about low carbohydrate dieting, ketosis, meal frequency, meal size, and meal timing, and provide valuable guidance regarding use of supplements, few of which have any value.  They emphasize getting about 30g of quality protein at each meal for optimum appetite control.  I don’t agree with every detail of this chapter, but the points on which I disagree are so minor as to be unworthy to discuss. They back this chapter with 107 references!

Chapter seven debunks common weight loss myths, and alone may be worth the cost of the book for many uninformed people.  Chapter eight shows people how to “do S.P.E.E.D.” including how to calculate caloric requirements, distribute macronutrients, choose foods, and put together menus.  It has a seven day sample plan of diet and exercise; I would add more non-starchy vegetables to the menus, but otherwise it faithfully gives a good low carbohydrate, medium protein, high fat meal plan.  They also include some sample, simple resistance training plans.

This book also has some valuable appendices on quality evidence; determining a healthy body weight; resources for information on nutrition, sleep, and hypnotherapy consistent with “doing S.P.E.E.D.”; and macronutrient composition of common foods. 

This book is short enough to read in an afternoon, but packed with valuable information and guidance for those who struggle to follow a healthy low-carbohydrate diet for weight management. 

The Vegetarian Myth Review Part 2

Political Vegetarians

Political vegetarians advocate a meat- or animal-free diet for the social good. These people believe that by eating a vegetarian diet they are increasing the amount of food available for humans, and that this is a good thing, i.e., that it will prevent starvation.

These people believe that every time you eat a steak, chicken leg, or any other animal product, you are depriving starving people of food.

These people also believe that raising animals causes global warming and causes the majority of agriculture-related pollution, and that adoption of a vegetarian diet based on grains would thus simultaneously feed the starving millions of people and create an ecological paradise.

Unfortunately, as Lierre Keith points out in The Vegetarian Myth, these people lack crucial information.

First, they don’t understand the animals. They calculate the amount of grain you must feed to, for instance, a steer, to produce a pound of beefsteak—some say 4.8 pounds—then conclude this wastes resources since we could send that grain to starving people somewhere (more on that later). In a startling non-sequitor, they then conclude that eating beef causes people to starve.

What they miss, Keith points out by quoting Rodney Heithschmidt and Jerry Stuth:

“[H]umankind has historically fostered and relied upon livestock grazing for a substantial portion of its livelihood because it is the only process capable of converting the energy in grassland vegetation into an energy source directly consumable by humans.”

In other words, as Ms. Keith notes:

“Nineteen billion metric tons of vegetation are produced by plants in grasslands and savannas, and we can’t eat them. Humans and ruminants are not naturally in competition for the same meal: This is where the political vegetarians have gone wrong.”

Put otherwise, if we stop raising and eating ruminants, we would in that be refusing to produce food for humans from grass.

Of course, cattle don’t have a natural adaptation to a diet of corn or grains in general. Ruminants display exquisite adaptation to a diet of grass, leaves, and other plant matter indigestible to humans. It doesn’t matter how many pounds of grass it takes to grow a pound of beef, because we can’t eat grass directly. The problem with our food system lies not in omnivory, but in forcing animals to eat diets to which they are not adapted.

Now let’s say we implemented the vegetarian plan. We take all the livestock off grain, and continue to raise the grain. Then we send it to the people starving wherever. Shall we pat ourselves on the back for our benevolence?

No. The moment you dump free grain into an environment of hungry people, you have destroyed the local farm economy and created an unsustainable economy.

No farmer can compete with giveaways. If you give food en masse to a population, the increase in supply and unbeatable price will drive prices down to nothing and put local farmers out of business.

As Ms. Keith puts it, “It may seem counterintuitive, but the last place to put cheap food is near chronically hungry people.” She quotes Lyle Vandyke, the former Canadian Minister of Agriculture:

“Consider a farmer in Ghana who used to be able to make a living growing rice. Several years ago, Ghana was able to feed [itself] and export their surplus. Now, it imports rice. From where? Developed countries. Why? Because it’s cheaper. Even if it costs the rice producer in the developed world much more to produce the rice, he doesn’t have to make a profit from his crop. The government pays him [subsidies] to grow it, so he can sell it more cheaply to Ghana than the farmer in Ghana can. And that farmer in Ghana? He can’t feed his family any more.”

And quoting Oxfam: “Exporters can offer US surpluses for sale at prices around half the cost of production; destroying local agriculture and creating a captive market in the process.”

On top of that, as Daniel Quinn has pointed out, if you give a population an amount of food that could not be produced in the local ecology, this will cause the population to grow to numbers unsupportable by local food production. Increasing grain production, and increasing the availability of grain for human food, will simply increase the human population.

As I wrote in The Garden of Eating:

“Vegetarians assert we should stop eating meat to increase the supply of food for humans. In the mid-1990s, U.S. livestock consumed 130 tons of grain annually, enough to feed about 400 million people. Food supply experts Russell Hopfenberg, Ph.D., of Duke University (Durham, North Carolina), and David Pimentel, Ph.D., of Cornell University (Ithaca, New York) explain why the vegetarian idea is misguided: ‘Certainly there would be even more human food available if dependence on livestock was decreased. However, because human population is a function of food availability, the resulting increase in available human food would induce a commensurate rise in population. This population increase would ultimately exacerbate the starvation and malnutrition predicament.’[1]”

Political/environmental vegetarians often make claims about the productivity of vegetarian agriculture as oppose to animal husbandry. For example, the British group Vegfam claims that a 10 acre farm can support 60 people growing soybeans, 24 people growing wheat, 10 people growing corn, and only two producing cattle. Keith responds:

“ Set aside the fact that a diet of soy, wheat, or corn will result in massive malnutrition—along with fun stuff like kwashiorkor, pellagra, retardation, blindness—and ultimately death. The figure of two [for] cattle might be true if you assume grain feeding, though I can’t make the math come out.”

She then points to Joel Salatin’s Polyface farm as a refutation of the assumptions in the Vegfam calculations. On ten acres of land, Salatin’s grass-based husbandry produces:
3000 eggs
1000 broilers
80 stewing hens
2000 pounds of beef
2500 pounds of pork
100 turkeys
50 rabbits

This would support at least 9 people for a year, and as Keith points out, “in full health,” since people can live on a diet composed solely of the foods above, whereas none of the foods proposed by Vegfam form a complete diet.

In addition, Salatin’s farm produces a few inches of topsoil per year whereas monocultures proposed by Vegfam destroy topsoil.

Keith also addresses claims that livestock consume too much water. She goes through the figures, showing that vegetarian claims don’t hold water, and more importantly, that animals don’t either:

“But most importantly, animals aren’t ever-expanding water balloons. For a steer, almost all of that water will be returned in the form of urine and feces laden with nutrients and bacteria, value-added as it were, to the land that needs it. For a dairy animal, there’s also milk.”

In other words, animals aren’t consuming and destroying water, they are part of nature’s water-flow cycle, essential to fertilization of the land. Vegetarians appear ignorant of this. I liked this passage Ms. Keith penned:

“The political vegetarians, however noble their intentions, are planning a planetary diet in compete ignorance of where food comes from. Advocates like Peter Singer and John Robbins want us to grow annual grains and no animals at all. Set aside the topsoil, water, climate, and typography [sic, I think she meant topography] problems. What is going to fertilize that grain? Peter, John: what is going to feed your food? Vegetarians, like everyone else in an urban industrial culture, have no concept that plants need to eat, that soil is alive and hungry. They seem shocked when I ask them what will feed their food. Do plants eat? Their expressions say. They don’t just … happen? There was a time when I didn’t know either, so I’m patient. But eventually the question has to be answered: fossil fuel, or manure?”

Ms. Keith addresses all of the other claims made by political vegetarians against animal husbandry, like that it uses more fuel than monoculture or causes global warming. In fact raising animals on grass is more fuel efficient than raising row crops, and monoculture of row crops has a net effect of releasing carbon into the atmosphere whereas raising ruminants on pasture has the net effect of sequestering carbon. Get a copy for your favorite political vegetarian.


Notes:

1. Hopfenberg R. Pimentel D. Human population numbers as a function of food supply. Environment, Development, and Sustainability 2001;3:1-15.

The Vegetarian Myth Book Review

By Don Matesz


Bottom line: If you believe eating a vegetarian diet improves your moral standing, you need to read this book. If you believe that eating a vegetarian diet will solve world hunger, you need to read this book. If you believe that mass adoption of a vegetarian diet will “save the Earth” from environmental catastrophe, you need to read this book. If you believe that eating a vegetarian diet will give you health and longevity, you need to read this book.

Although Ms. Keith directs her prose to those who eat a vegetarian, particularly a vegan diet, I think everyone needs to read this book. If you believe in agriculture as a way of life, i.e. you believe that agriculture will sustain civilization, and feed people indefinitely, you need to read this book.

Ms. Keith writes from the perspective of a 20-year veteran of vegetarian and vegan dieting who has sustained irreparable damage to her body as a result. As she watched her health deteriorate under the influence of vegan dieting, and made efforts to actually grow her own food, she gradually lost faith in the holy trinity of vegetarianism:

1) Moral vegetarianism, based on the belief that a vegetarian diet reduces bloodshed.
2) Political vegetarianism, based on the belief that widespread practice of a vegetarian diet would produce a sustainable agriculture and social justice.
3) Nutritional vegetarianism, based on the belief that a vegetarian diet produces better health than an omnivorous diet.

In my view, these three legs of vegetarianism are merely logical extensions of the near universal belief in moral, political, social, and nutritional superiority of agri-culture in comparison to hunting-and-gathering culture.

Moral Vegetarians

Moral vegetarianism espouses a principle of non-violence. The advocates wish to eat without killing or stealing from any other organism. As Ms. Keith puts it, the vegetarian nearly prays:

“Let me live without harm to others. Let my life be possible without death.”

This chapter recounts Ms. Keith’s inner and outer struggles with life and death on her path to realizing that, of course, life and death are not really two opposites.

“If killing is the problem, the life of one grass-fed cow will feed me for an entire year. But a single vegan meal of plant babies—rice grains, almonds, soybeans—ground up or boiled alive, will involve hundreds of deaths. Why don’t they matter?”

Throughout this chapter, Ms. Keith shows us how her own moral understanding evolved from the juvenile ethical code of veganism to an adult understanding of how nature really works, as a result of her engaging directly in food production herself. Ms. Keith tells us how, as a vegan attempting to garden, she learned that plants need to eat animal products to thrive. Her garden would not grow without the nitrogen and minerals packed up in blood and bone. Even apple trees eat meat:

“I found one small comfort in The Apple Grower by Michael Phillips. He quotes a book called The Apple Culturist from 1871, recounting the story of an apple tree near the graves of Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, and his wife Mary Sayles. The roots of the tree were found to have grown in to the graves and assumed the shape of human skeletons while ‘the graves [were] emptied of every particle of human dust. Not a trace of anything was left’”

As she developed her own garden, it attracted other animals. As she puts it, she got “locked in mortal combat with the slugs.” Eventually she had to decide whether to save the slugs or save her garden for her own needs. After much internal struggle, she settled on getting chickens and ducks to eat the slugs. She rationalized that the killing would fall on the ducks and chickens, not herself because “it was their nature, their instinct to hunt insects.” Which led her to ponder:

“Wasn’t death natural? Was it? Or wasn’t it? Which way did I want the answer to fall?

“Because if death was natural—a part of life, not an insult to life—then why was I a vegan?”

Why indeed.

Moral vegetarians believe that agriculture does no damage, that grains and legumes have no blood spilled in their fields. Ms. Keith points out that only someone who has never really understood agriculture could believe this:

“So here is an agriculture without animals, the plant-based diet that is supposed to be so life-affirming and ethically righteous. First, take a piece of land from somebody else, because the history of agriculture is the history of imperialism. Next, bulldoze or burn all the life off it: the trees, the grasses, the wetlands. That includes all creatures great and small: the bison, the grey wolves, the black terns. A tiny handful of species—mice, locusts—will manage, but the other aimals have to go. Now plant your annual monocrops. Your grains and beans will do okay at first, living off the organic matter created by the now-dead forest or prairie. But like any starving beast, the soil witll eat its reserves, until there’s nothing—no organic matter, no biological activity—left. As your yields—your food supply—begin to dwindle, you’ve got two options. Take over another piece of land and start again, or apply some fertilizer. Since the books, pleading and polemical, say that animal products are inherently oppressive and unsustainable, you can’t use manure, bone meal, or blood meal. So you supply nitrogen from fossil fuel. Do I need to add that you can’t produce this yourself, that its production is an ecological nightmare, that one day the oil and gas will run out?

“Your phosphorous will have to be made from rocks. There’s a reason for the popular image that equates hard labor in prison with chopping rocks. How will you mine it, grind it, or transport it without fossil fuel, using only human musculature and without using slavery? …Meanwhile the soil is turning to dust, clogging the rivers, blowing across the continent. In 1934, the entire eastern seaboard was covered in a thick haze of brown, the topsoil of Oklahoma plowed to cotton and wheat, drifting like an angry ghost to cover the eastern cities and further, to ships hundreds of miles out to sea, a final, fitting tribute to the extractive economies of the civilized. This is where agriculture ends: in death. The trees, the grasses, the birds and the beasts are gone, and the topsoil with them. More of the same is no solution.”

So what does she settle on as the ethical solution?

“It’s so simple, as simple, really, as my vegan morality: we need to be a part of the world to know it. And when we join, when we participate, we see that life and death can’t be separated any more than night and day. I will face what is dying to feed me and I will do my best to ensure that it is individuals—cared for, respected—not entire species; that soil—the work of our grandparents for half a billion years—is built, not destroyed; that the rivers keep their waters and their wetlands and that the oil stays in the ground. Only then can I claim the title ‘adult.’”

Ms. Keith’s struggle with to reconcile life and death is a classic example of the suffering endured in a culture based on a juvenile philosophy of dualism. Western philosophy has long suffered from dualistic thought, in which life/mind/male/action/hardness/white is good and death/body/female/rest/softness/black is bad. This has led to a culture that tries to pull nature apart at the seams, to isolate the good from the bad, to kill death and everything that resembles it because of its dimness. Think of how hard we strive to eliminate the night by powering up the lights. It is a losing battle.

Image source: Wikipedia

Chinese philosophers and scientists represented the non-dual nature of nature in the Yin-Yang symbol. Yin represents death and yang represents life. The symbol shows how they mold and feed one another; each ultimately transforming into the other. The play of yin and yang is simply the course of change. Reality moves and this movement naturally produces polar phenomena like life and death. Long ago the Chinese realized that dualistic thought is really a mental illness, a state of mind that does not accurately reflect reality. If you try to eliminate death, you will undermine life; and if you try to exaggerate life, you will also exaggerate death. It makes you crazy.

Next time I will reflect on Ms. Keith’s chapter on Political Vegetarians.