Saladino's idea that the ancestral diet wasn't low carb


(Sama Hoole) #1

Was just listening to a podcast Saladino did with Dr.Nicoloantonio the other day, where the latter was making the case that freshly killed meat has hundreds of grams of glycogen, which degrades quite slowly. Thereby making the ancestral diet moderately high in carbs.

Personally I don’t think it makes any sense, since we wouldn’t have been tearing through a mammoth within a few hours, and usually ate a carcass over a period of days if not weeks.

Is there any science on the time it takes for glycogen to degrade after slaughter?


#2

HOW MUCH freshly killed meat… :smiley: We have our limits at eating even when we do feasting/famine… So yep, I am with you.

But I am looking forward to read about the glycogen if one is knowledgeable enough… I won’t read very long and deep articles though.

And what about our fresh meat, databases show very low sugar content in it… I don’t know how much glycogen we have in our muscles but not THAT much… And the animal probably lost from it during the chase…

No way that ate lots of carbs from meat.


#3

glycogen in meat and how it might more rapid decay etc when the kill is hunted or slaughtered etc is MORE about the meat quality. Just google that and learn that how the meat is ‘handled’ beforehand whether a long hunt/run chase or a line to harvest that meat in a process unit etc. Alot of info on it thru science studies on it.

Meat and ‘high carb’ are not in the same chat in that, eating meat only means one is NOT eating plants and those plants contain plant sugars which are present in that plant matter as ‘a real deal’ and can’t compare against muscle meats and glycogen levels and their nutrient/vits/ mineral attachments also, etc…along with their toxicity levels of what that plant is and more that can work against the body…so we are not comparing apples to oranges at all when discussing ‘high carb’ intake from a meat source.

total stupid chat from Saladino on this one if ya ask me personally LOL
I wouldn’t give this another bit of my brain power but lately Saladino sure has been winging alot of crap out there, which is why he is losing followers like crazy also and think him now as ‘one of those’ who is grasping at straws, and for what reason? I don’t know but I discount him now more and more for sure personally.

‘carbs’ in meat will never, ever be ‘carbs’ from plant matter ingested so…bunk from Saladinos angle for sure…ugh…


#4

Yep, I am with Fangs, sugar in meat or eggs is very, very different for my body, it feels quite fine, surely I am not alone :wink:
20g carbs from my liver and eggs vs 20g carbs from plants? Two different worlds.
I probably would choose 40g from meat, eggs AND dairy (still keto for me) over 10-20g from plants if I don’t have a preference regarding the food itself… As sometimes plants are nice. But I do feel the carbs.
(I still don’t know if lots of lactose have a negative effect on me but I don’t feel it like with plants.)

But it can’t be so much carbs from meats… But I don’t feel “I had carbs!” when I inhale 400g liver and several eggs either. It feels just like eating extreme low-carb meat. It’s not true if the carbs come from plants even if it’s still keto for me. It not bad, per se but I do feel the carbs and it’s a tiny bit worse than not to.

So no amount of carbs from my animal products would make me think it’s fine not to do low-carb :smiley: Or that plants carbs are the same :slight_smile: Anyway, plants have other things in it though I don’t feel those being a problem for me.


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #5

My question is, “hundreds of grams” per what? Hundreds of grams per a 900 lb./409 kg carcase? Hundreds of grams per kilo? There’s a big difference. Someone might be able to eat a kilo in one sitting, but a whole carcase? Get real!

According to U.S. Department of Agriculture figures, raw beef with the fat trimmed off is 99% water and protein, the rest being micronutrients. I’m not claiming that the USDA data are 100% accurate, but the idea of “hundreds of grams” of glycogen needs data to back it up. I want to see the studies Saladino and Nicolantonio are talking about, before I’m going to worry about glycogen in meat.

And in any case, digestible carbohydrates are pure glucose, with the molecules arranged in various ways, so how are plant foods any better than meat, which is mostly not glucose, even if it contains “hundreds of grams” of glucose? Again, until I see their data, and can judge for myself, I refuse to worry about it.


(Bob M) #7

Is the “latter” Saladino?

I have heard about glycogen being in fresh killed meat, but never much looked into it, as the meat we get isn’t “fresh”. I know I’ve seen discussions of how long it takes for glycogen to decrease, but I cannot find them right now. These might have been on Twitter, which I quit due to Elon Musk.

Here’s an interesting article saying you want more glycogen in your meat because of the pH:

https://www.beefresearch.org/resources/product-quality/fact-sheets/dark-firm-and-dry-beef

This says the glycogen level could be 1.0%, although 1.0% of what (weight?):

In a pound of meat, that would be 0.16 ounces of glycogen (if it’s by weight). Assuming that glycogen is all carbs, that’s not a lot of carbs. One pound is 454 grams, so that’s 4.54 grams of glycogen. Not a lot.

Edit: And note that this is muscle glycogen, not fat. One of the theories is that we at ate a lot of fat, because that’s what provided the calories we needed. But if we ate ANY fat along with muscle meat. we’d lower that 4.54 grams of glycogen per pound to something even smaller.


(KM) #8

From Texas A&M: https://meat.tamu.edu/ansc-307-honors/conversion-muscle-to-meat/

"In dying muscle, lactic acid accumulates and lowers pH.

Within 24 hours after death

(1) glycogen ——->; lactic acid

(2) muscle pH: 7.0 ——->; 5.6 (because of lactic acid)"

In the same brief it states that glycogen reduces from .3-1% (depending on the color of the meat) to .1% over 24 hours.


(Sama Hoole) #9

Nicoloantonio mentioned a study that showed glycogen degrades slowly, but I couldn’t track it down. But the gist of their argument was that.

A - We loved eating liver by the pound, and liver is high in glycogen
B - Our ancestors devoured carcasses within hours - Which Saladino bases on the Hadza eating baboons - Not that our ancestors ate many baboons or small animals

I think I need to stop listening to that podcast.


(Sama Hoole) #10

Perfect, thanks. It’s a pretty miniscule amount, certainly not enough to take the diet up from low carb status.


#11

If I eat a pound of liver (it’s very easy but it’s my personal record, not like I try to eat much, in the contrary as liver is too nutritious compared to my ability and willingness to eat it), that’s still very much keto. Yes, it’s a carby meat but still low-carb. Just like fresh meat with glycogen in it, actually. I personally couldn’t eat enough meat to go over my ketosis carb limit.

Considering all the info I got from this thread (thanks), it’s a small amount, definitely low-carb even with huge amount of meat and keto for many, probably most of us.

That’s it, I won’t waste more time to care about such statements… Not like it sounded even remotely right in the beginning…


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

As a matter of fact, our ancestors evolved eating megafauna. The sort of animals with carcases that wouldn’t be “devoured within hours.”

Also, the amount of carbohydrate in their diet is pretty accurately indicated by radiocarbon analyses of the remains.


(Edith) #13

I lost my respect for Paul Saladino, not because he started eating fruit and honey, but because he did a 180 where keto and carnivore are concerned. He no longer believes it is healthy to stay in ketosis for extended periods of time. Also, he seemed to be very careful about the research he used to promote carnivore as the healthiest way to eat. Once he added fruit and honey, the research he now uses to prove his point (about keto being bad) doesn’t seem to be as rigorous.


(Bob M) #14

This statement alone should disqualify anyone thinking this is a correct thesis.

Anyone know how many livers are in an animal?

Anyone want to calculate the ratio of everything else to liver?

Let’s look it up:

image

Assuming you have 800 pounds of meat and fat (what I assume is a dressed carcass), you only get one 20 pound liver. 780 pounds of other stuff to eat.

Edit: We bought half a pig. We did get the liver (or did we get half? not sure). It comes in two tiny packages. Meanwhile, we have a ton of other meat.


(Alec) #15

Bingo! Saladboy is way out of his depth. He’s trained as a psychiatrist, and has never practised as a doctor. I am unsure why he thinks he has wisdom to provide…


#16

that was it for me too VE! You nailed my thoughts about his new approach. I mean walking into Keto and Carnivore is what healed him physically, then he backtracks, which is fine if one can, but at the same time yells loud the plans that healed him suck rocks now? WTH?

Gosh if I could go back into eating other things and do fine and live great I would do it in a second, but I would also give kudos to the plans like Keto and Carnivore for allowing my body to do just that. Why he has to ruin the other plans that worked well for him just cause he opted and ‘can do’ different eating now is a sign of some psycho disorder he has, only he knows why he has to do that I guess LOL Nice thing is not many are listening to him anymore. He lost his hold out there, well seems that way to me kinda.


#17

That’s a little out on context, neither spoke of anything every remotely the size of a mammoth, nor could most take one out, Saladino mentioned a Baboon when he was with the Hadza and that is was mostly gone in an hour, DiNicoloantonio said the glycogen would hang around for around 24hrs and that commercial meat would have near zero, and it’s completely believable that a large strong animal would have hundreds of grams of glycogen, which wouldn’t matter because many would be eating it, I don’t remember either ever saying they didn’t eat low carb, even a couple hundred grams split within a tribe would still very much be low carb.


(Bob M) #18

The problem with going to visit the Hazda (or anything like this) is that you see what you want to see and ignore what you don’t. Saladino goes to the Hazda and sees a high carb diet apparently. Because that’s what his bias is. He apparently has to “prove” that he should be chugging honey, or whatever he’s doing now.

Listened to this podcast:

https://podbay.fm/p/peak-human-unbiased-nutrition-info-for-optimum-health-fitness-and-living/e/1615514801

In this, they actually measure the ketones of the Hazda, and they get low levels of ketones, meaning the people were on a diet low enough in carbs to be in what I would call ketosis. (They might not talk about measuring ketones here; I know they did, but I think they have 3-4 podcasts where they visited different tribes in Africa including the Maasai – who, by the way, they thought were healthier then the Hazda and ate basically meat – but somewhere in there they do discuss blood ketones.)

If you want a different viewpoint of the Hazda, listen to this episode.

I stopped listening to Saladino (1) when he said something I KNEW was not true, yet acted like he was the expert in that area (covid-related); (2) when he had Amber O’Hearn on the program, and was telling her we had to eat raw liver every day and you should only eat raw eggs, but not the whites, because they were bad for you. You could hear it in Amber’s voice: even she was like “Ah, what the heck are you talking about?” (Of course, she didn’t say that…)


#19

THIS!


#20

If I remember the timeframe right, maybe I don’t, he was Carnivore then and seeing them eat fruits and honey started the way he is now, I’ve come and gone with Saladino a couple times over the years. I definitely don’t think he feels the need to prove anything, he’s constantly pissing listeners off and losing YT subscribers and getting bashed for stuff he says, which he admits. He’s always pretty clear what he does has shown to be right for him, nothing more.

I like him because he’ll let what happening (usually lab based) snap him out of dogma of what he’s doing, but WITH THAT SAID… he DOES get really really really obsessed sometimes with whatever he’s doing at the time and go “a little” too extreme and it becomes anoying. He did it when he ate Keto, then with Carnivore, now with his custom “Animal Based” (I like the term though). It’s just the dudes cycle.

He’s one of those podcasts I leave in there, look at the episodes come up, may skip 4,5,6 of them then something catches my eye and I’ll go back in.


#21

The Masaai consume raw milk though, and honey, I think, as an ingredient for their mead. Their diet consists of these basic foods: milk, meat, fat, blood and honey. And it all sounds very healthy and logical to me, so I can well believe how healthy they seem and are, living on such a WOE. I am interested in such a WOE myself as I have already experienced benefits from drinking raw milk, and will be incorporating raw honey, and also some organ meats. I won’t be chugging blood, but when I grew up I ate black pudding and that would be a good equivalent, without any unnecessary ingredients. I don’t agree with Dr. Paul Mason regarding milk, and I also found it curious he both disregarded the benefits of drinking milk and talked about the Masaai in the same video/lecture, as the Masaai traditionally drank and still drinks raw milk.

The Hadza, from what I’ve read, rely on hunting animals and gathering wild fruits and vegetables for food. They don’t do agriculture and don’t keep herds so the milk and blood is from animals they hunt. They are nomads, true hunter gatherers who as well as hunting out of need, not greed, gather wild honey, berries and tubers.