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Next up: Miki Ben-Dor #Carnivorycon
about protein. Normally we talk about minimal requirements. Here I want to talk about optimal levels.
The limit on protein consumption exists because of [urea excretion ?].
They took 10 young men and started feeding them more and more and more protein and measuring the urea excretion. As soon as the urea excretion stopped increasing, as far as he was concerned, that was the limit.
Then they calculated the urea, protein... came up with the limit. Just remember we don't know much about these 10 young men.
Miki looked for experiments with high protein intake. They were interested in body composition changes. They didn't find any, but that doesn't really interest us. What he wants to know is, how did the subjects react to this high amounts of protein?
[Ed: I love Miki Ben-Dor because he retired from a business career and then took up science and is working on his PhD.]
[Maybe I'll do that when I grow up.]
Some subjects complained about gastrointestinal effects, and "feeling hot".
You know that the thermal effect of food is very high in protein compared to other macronutrients.
In the end it looks like 307 grams for average 75-kg people was scratching the limit.
Some of them had enlarged liver. Enlarged liver could happen from this need to process more and more protein. It wasn't a problem -- they didn't suffer from it.
So I would say that the conclusion I draw -- and of course we need more research etc. etc.
Good resaerch on the Hadza. Went to the Hadza and gave them the double-labelled water...
You can calculate how much protein would have been the maximal. It comes out to about 32%.
This is the model. A model is like a machine. You just press here and somethign comes out there. This is the model I use in all my resaerch. The x axis is how much plant in the diet. The y axis is not just animal in the diet.
The y axis is how much proportion of your diet has to be animals to get "complete protein exploitation". [I DON'T GET IT. —Ed]
Let's assume at most 50% plant diet. The fatness of the animals that you have to hunt would have to be 40% fat in order to not overshoot [something]. There are not many animals 40% fat, especially not smaller. So already you are limited to the bigger animals.
What about in a dry season? Like if it is snowing and cold. Good luck finding plants to eat. Double whammy. The availability of plant foods goes down, but the same thing happens to the animals.
If the amount of plants you can find is 10%,then you need animals which are 60% fat.
[Okay I get it now. The y axis is how much fat the animal has to be made up of. —Zooko]
During a dry season animals have less fat.
One of the most important things in my opinion is the extinction of the large animals.
For 65 million years the average size of animals rose, from mice to 500 kilos average.
To have 500 kilos *average*, you have to have 12 tons elephants. Which we had.
We've seen [on previous slides] how important large animals were.
So if we go back to the model, we see that the availability of large animals started to decline. Now already we are kind of stuck with the protein limit, because if we are looking for fat, it means we exploit all the protein that we can exploit.
To get fat is more difficult than to get protein. Any animal has protein but not any animal has fat.
On an evolutionary time-scale, it looks like we were always at the protein limit. Not always, but most of the time.
Hunters spend all their energy to get an animal. If it doesn't have fat, they just leave it. They can't eat more protein.
This is crazy for a predator. A predator kills whatever it encounters to eat it. By limiting your targets to 50% of the population, that's crazy. And, you're picking the ones that are in the best shape. Can run faster! Can attack you! It doesn't make sense.
This doesn't make sense, unless the younger and stronger contain more fat than the older one. Prime of life caribou contain 66% more fat than a random caribou.
The other is fatty parts. Humans butcher the animal and then bring to a separate location to eat. There is a bias toward fatty parts.
To get fat from bone in paleolithic conditions is a very complicated process. You dig a hole in the ground, you cover it with hide. You go get some wood. You get some big stones that hold heat. You put the hot stones in water to heat the water. …
You spend a lot of energy to crush the bones. You have to go further and further away to get the big stones. The people who research this consider it a sign of distress.
The archaeological record shows that we are desperate for fat, and the only interpreation that I can think of is that we are on the protein limit.
The question is, what is optimal? I don't hav the anwer to that but we can talk a bit.
Would we say that the limit is optimal? I dunno, if you take a car and run it at top speed, is that best? I don't know, we need someone who studies this.
Instead of optimal, instead of ideal, I think of it as a safety template.
My conclusion is that animal protein is a safe calorie at high rates of consumption. How high? I do't know, but:
In honor of Shawn Baker, I converted the units to ribeyes per day.
I must emphasize, this is not *acute* eating. You can eat six or seven or eight in a day as long as you do not continue to eat every day.
I do not claim this number is ideal, but if you compare to the present U.S. average of 88 grams, it is about 1/3 of what I consider to be the evolutionary consumption.
Aging? Capacity to metabolize protein is going down... If you have renal problems forget about it. Always consult your wisely chosen physician.
P.S. I love elephants. I think some elephants love people. (He show a video of an elephant hugging a girl.)
