#apparently there's like different sub-types of magnesium

[lliaq]

tmi but the only thing i know of that helps with ovulation insomnia is sleeping cold and masturbation. maybe evening walks, too? but even then i’m up until 4am. fucking sucks.

thanks but I already tried those :( guess we're all just suffering together at the whims of our hormones

the one thing I saw someone mention on reddit once was magnesium - I got nauseous from the supplement I tried, so maybe not for everyone, but it seems to help some people?

[scriptchemist]

Hi! I'm trying to work out ways to differentiate between true and false jade. It's my understanding that though both nephrite (Ca2(Mg, Fe)5Si8O22(OH)2) and serpentine ((Mg, Fe)3Si2O5(OH)4) contain magnesium, nephrite has a higher temperature required in order to burn. So, would it be plausible to test the difference between the two by trying to burn small chips of the sample? Would there be any harmful byproducts? Is there an easier way to tell which is which? Thank you so much!!

The field you’re thinking of is gemology, which is the study of gems and gemstone materials. Of the techniques available to gemologists, combustion isn’t the first, or even the fifth, test they’d reach for. Here are a few reasons why:

Non-destructive methods are preferred. If I send in a piece of jade for analysis, I would expect to get it back whole and hale, not charred, and not have bits of it hacked off. That said, non-destructive isn’t always possible (more on this later), but if we have to go destructive, there are much better ways to do it than fire.

Gemstones and minerals, being natural, are products of their environment and their properties may differ a little from sample to sample. One ruby from one end of the world will likely differ from a ruby obtained from another part of the world, even if they’re both rubies. This is why many properties, such as hardness, specific gravity, etc, are often given as a range. So unless nephrite and serpentine burn at very different temperatures (side note: I have no idea what temperatures they’d burn at) and do not overlap with the burning temperatures of any other precious stone, it’s very hard to definitively say what this sample is based on the results from one test.

I’m answering this under the assumption that modern techniques are available. If modern techniques aren’t available that changes things, but then I assume then your character wouldn’t have the means to measure temperatures precisely at the temperatures required to burn gems and precious stones. 

Also, identifying a sample is a process of elimination–these are not defining characteristics. In other words, these tests tell you what your sample isn’t or what it could be, not what it is, and your character must tick off the possibilities one by one until they figure out what it must be. Your character is trying to determine the identity of this sample out of all the green-coloured hunks of precious stone and minerals possible, not just choosing between nephrite and serpentine (both of which have various sub-types), so it wouldn’t be a binary choice of “oh, it’s B because it’s not A.”

Having said all that, here’s some tests your gemologist character can try to identify their unknown sample (disclaimer: I am not a gemologist):

Observation of colour, lustre, and other visual characteristics

Give your sample a good hard look with the eyes, with a 10x loupe, and/or if your character has access to a full gemologist lab, with a binocular microscope. What’s its colour? What’s its lustre? How’s it cut? If this is a jewellery piece rather than a rough sample, has the surface been oiled or otherwise treated? Do you see fibres running throughout, or crystalline masses? Is there evidence of heat treatment? Is it a composite stone? (Composites are stones that have been mounted on or sandwiched between cheaper materials to lower costs, increase strength, etc. A doublet is a precious stone mounted onto a cheaper backing; a triplet is a precious stone sandwiched between two layers of cheaper material.)

Nephrite’s lustre ranges from vitreous (glassy) to greasy, while serpentine ranges from vitreous, greasy, and silky.  Colours of both vary.

Density (or specific gravity)

Density is defined as mass divided by volume, and specific gravity is a ratio of a sample’s density vs that of water. Specific gravity is very easy to measure: simply weigh your sample in air on a scale, then weigh it again when submerged in water; SG = (mass in air)/(mass in air - mass when submerged).

Nephrite’s specific gravity is approximately 2.9-3.04; serpentine’s is about 2.4-2.8.

Refractive index

Light slows and bends as it enters a gemstone due to its greater density. By measuring how much the light bends as it passes through a material we determine the refractive index of a material, which is a good identifying (but not defining) characteristic. This can be measured with a handheld instrument called the refractometer.

Nephrite’s refractive index is about 1.600 to 1.640; serpentine’s is about 1.490-1.575.

Birefringence

Most precious stones are doubly refractive. When a beam of light enters the stone, it splits into two beams, each with its own speed and travel path. It therefore has two refractive indices, not one. Birefringence is the difference between the two refractive indicies. This is measured with a polariscope.

Nephrite’s birefringence is about 0.027; serpentine’s is about 0.014.

Few stones are singly refractive, so if you find one that’s singly refractive, you narrow down the list quite a bit.

Pleochroism

When a doubly-refractive stone splits light into two beams, each beam is absorbed differently by the stone. In many cases this difference in absorption is too minute to be observed, but when the difference in absorption is significant enough, the stone will show different (two to three) colours when viewed from different angles. This is termed pleochroism, and depending on if two or three colours are observed with a dichroscope, this tells a lot about the stone’s crystal structure.

Neither nephrite nor serpentine exhibits pleochroism, but other green-coloured stones (e.g. emerald) do–hence, process of elimination.

Absorption spectra

Spectroscopy is the study of matter interacting with electromagnetic radiation. The types and breadth of spectroscopic techniques available are enough to fill several textbooks, but for the purposes of gemology the most common type used is the absorption of visible light. The colour of a stone is due to what wavelengths of light it absorbs. If a stone absorbs all the wavelengths of visible light except for green, the stone will look green to the observer. The absorption of visible light can be seen on a device called a spectroscope.

I wasn’t able to find much information on diagnostic bands for nephrite and serpentine. Apparently bands can sometimes be seen at 510 nm and 495 nm for nephrite. Unfortunately, various types of serpentine seem to have bands at 540, 492, 495, 497-498, 464-465, 460 nm, so it would likely be hard to differentiate between nephrite and serpentine using a spectroscope. Other techniques (specific gravity, refractive index, etc.) are probably more useful.

Luminescence

When irradiated with electromagnetic radiation, some stones absorb that energy and release it so that the emitted energy is visible to the human eyes. UV is the most common energy source, though X-ray, visible light, and other sources are possible.

As far as I can find, nephrite and serpentine are not luminescent (but some other green-coloured stones may. Process of elimination again).

Note that UV-Vis spectra can also be observed using a more precise instrument called the spectrophotometer, which is capable of far higher resolutions than the human eye across a far greater range of wavelengths. However, to load a sample onto such an instrument does usually require some destruction of the sample. Also, spectrophotometers are quite expensive and usually out of reach of most gemologists.

Hardness

The Moh’s hardness scale ranks how hard precious stones are from 1 (talc, soft) to 10 (diamond, hard) and many precious stones have been assigned a hardness on the scale. However, since scratching the sample with reference materials will incur some damage, this is usually only performed on rough pieces or on inconspicuous areas, not on an obvious surface of a finished piece.

On Moh’s hardness scale, nephrite ranges from 6 to 6.5, while serpentine ranges from 2 to 5.5.

If your character is a gemologist, their options probably stop here (or pretty close to here). Again, a gemologist is a person trained to identify and appraise gems and precious stones, and tries to keep their sample undamaged. However, this blog is scriptchemist, not scriptgemologist, and chemists do have a few additional options. If your character is a chemist (preferably a materials chemist), with the infinite budget (hahaha…*sarcastic laughter*) and expensive instruments available to chemists, who are not limited to non-destructive options…well, the identification of this sample will probably go a lot quicker.

I will let J go into the details of the marvels of diffraction, as he is way more knowledgeable than I. :)

Numbers for the properties above were obtained from The Gemology Project or Wikipedia, and the absorption spectra were from The Spectroscope and Gemmology (not affiliated).

~Z

J here – As a materials chemist I would approach this problem a little bit differently, but that is mostly because (1) I am a crystallographer and (2) I happen to have access to a very particular instrument and an associated database, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

Let’s pretend your character knows a graduate student who happens to be a materials chemist like me. They show up with two stones, which might be samples from larger batches that have been sorted based on the criteria Z laid out above, or individual stones from some archeological dig, but your character needs positive identification. The first thing I would ask them is whether or not I can grind the stones up into a very fine powder. This may seem like an odd thing to do, but if the answer is yes I can probably tell them exactly what each stone is in about an hour, and they can have the powder back undamaged.

In materials chemistry a huge amount of the day-to-day work is something we call phase identification. While the word ‘phase’ is often used to refer to phases of matter (solid, liquid, gas, or plasma), materials chemists use the term to refer to a substance with a set elemental composition in a specific crystal structure. For example, titanium dioxide (TiO2) has eight different modifications with the same composition but different crystal structures; each one of these would constitute a different phase in a given sample. A researcher will perform a synthesis to get a material, but before they can do anything with it they need to confirm that it’s the exact material they wanted. In the case of TiO2 the different modifications have different catalytic activities, and having the wrong form could ruin your experiment. Elemental analysis wouldn’t be useful as the composition is the same for all the structures, and it may be very difficult or impossible to tell them apart spectroscopically as well. Because of this, the go-to technique for phase identification is powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD for short), because it is sensitive to both the composition and the crystal structure.

In a typical experiment a material is ground into a powder and loaded onto a sample holder – the more the better, but I’ve run samples with as little as 5-10 mg, which in this case would be roughly a 1.5 mm cube of either stone. A full description of how X-ray diffraction works is somewhat beyond the scope of this post (if anyone is wondering, start here or send an ask and I’ll tell you everything, it is literally my specialty), but suffice it to say that you shine X-rays on the sample and sweep a detector through an arc, measuring the diffracted intensity with respect to the diffraction angle. You end up with a discrete set of peaks, the locations of which tell you about the general symmetry of the structure and the intensities give information about the types of atoms and their locations within the structure. You get a different set of peaks for each phase present in the sample, but you can’t just look at a diffraction pattern and say, “yep, that’s a titanium right there, and a couple of oxygens over here” – that’s where the database comes in. The International Centre for Diffraction Data maintains a database with nearly one million distinct patterns of known materials, and the experimental pattern collected for each of the stones can be matched against the entries in the database.  As both nephrite and serpentine have been studied before, they’re in the database and their exact patterns could be matched fairly quickly for a positive identification. It might even be possible to narrow down a specific geographic location where the mineral was formed, due to natural variation in composition. This also works for identifying almost any mineral or crystalline substance – in my research, the only times I haven’t been able to match a sample to one or more entries in the database have been when I made something completely new.

Your character also might not need to befriend a materials chemist (but hey – we’re nice people! We like friends!), as there are private companies that specialize in phase identification and will analyze samples sent to them for a fee. It would be somewhat less plausible for your character to acquire the necessary equipment, as an entry-level benchtop powder diffractometer will set you back $80k, a five-year license to access the database is another $10k, and at least in the USA you’d have to deal with the state regulations and yearly inspections of equipment that produces X-rays – and the inspectors generally frown on having a diffractometer in a residential garage.

~J

Disclaimer

[milenasanchezmk]

What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters)

I joke around a lot and give them hell, but I have love and respect for plant-based diets and the people who eat them. These folks come at health from an entirely different place, and, it’s true, I don’t think their diets are optimal. I think they get a lot wrong. They often misconstrue what Primal is all about. I’ve even received threats from some of the less grounded members of the community, though I know that these are the outliers, the extremists, and I never took them seriously.

But…I’d also suggest plant-based dieters get a lot right. More than you’d think.

I’m not talking about the pastatarians, of course, or the junk food vegans, or the vegetarians who subsist entirely on pizza and Tofurkey. I’m talking about the ones eating loads of veggies. Actual vegetarians and vegans who eat actual plants.

They can learn a ton from us. That’s true. We can learn a lot from them, too. Today, I wanted to discuss just what I’ve learned and what we can learn from plant-based diets.

How to Maximize Nutrition from Subpar Sources

Being a vegan is hard work. Being a healthy vegan is even harder. We Primal types have it easy. We can really let the nutrient-density fall by the wayside because we can always fall back on a few pastured eggs, a quarter pound of beef liver, some wild salmon, a good steak, some oysters and mussels. Someone on a plant-based diet doesn’t have that luxury. They can’t rely on whey protein or ground beef for high-quality bioavailable protein; they have to combine legumes and grains to get the right mix of amino acids. They can’t get all the zinc and iron they’ll ever need from a half dozen oysters.

They have to comb the literature for nuts and seeds high in each and make sure not to eat too much iron-binding calcium or zinc-interfering copper at the same meal. They can’t eat long-chain omega-3s directly (unless they eat algae); they must make it out of ALA.

Imagine if you ate both high-quality animal foods and maximized the nutrition from plant sources. You’d be unstoppable.

Which Esoteric Leafy Greens You Should Try

There’s a clearly-vegan woman I often see at the farmer’s market. We’ve never spoken about our respective diets (contrary to popular belief, not all vegans immediately announce their dietary ideology), but it’s obvious from the dreadlocks, piercings, waif’s physique, blue/purple/green hair, and (more to the point) basket bulging with green things.

We do talk about what she’s got in that basket though. She’s always digging up the most interesting leafy greens, and I’m quick to ask for recommendations. Without her, I wouldn’t know about star spinach, or purslane (I figured it was just a weed; turns out it’s high in omega-3s, magnesium, and calcium), or sweet potato leaves (I’ve read about their use in Africa while researching for the blog but never actually had them), or the multitude of Asian greens. If you want to move past spinach, kale, chard, and lettuce, ask the only hominids who put down several pounds of leafy greens daily.

Why Low-Carb, High-Fat Didn’t Work For You

I’m on record as claiming that low-carb, high-fat Primal ways of eating are the simplest, most effective way to lose body fat for the most people. Hell, I’m about to release a book predicated on the notion that becoming fat-adapted is great for your health, performance, and longevity. But I’ll also admit that it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t do well on this type of macronutrient ratio. And that’s fine.

In her excellent presentation at AHS14, entitled “Lessons from the Vegans,” Denise Minger explained how some people who don’t thrive on low-carb, high-fat can actually prosper on low-fat, high-carb diets. But here’s the catch: They should be truly low-fat, as in sub-10% of calories from fat. Anything more, Denise cautions, and you run the risk of entering no man’s land where both fat and glucose metabolism are dysfunctional. The best example of this is the standard American diet, which contains moderate amounts of both (unhealthy) fat and carbs and fails miserably on all fronts.

It’s definitely not for me, and it won’t work for everyone or most, and you’d probably need to include animal foods, but you could put together a decent low-fat diet by sticking to Primal sources.

How Cruel Industrial Animal Agriculture Is

Animal well-being matters to us, but we often couch our distaste for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the substandard nutrient content of their products. Makes sense that we’d worry about the nutrition, since we’re eating so many animal foods. But there’s another reason that we shouldn’t forget.

And your average plant-based dieter certainly won’t let you forget that some of the industrial animal operations are truly repugnant. Chickens crammed in cages, beakless and miserable. Cows standing knee deep in their own manure. The actual killing is probably the most humane part, as the vast majority of animals are stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before being killed and butchered. But the life of a CAFO animal is quite miserable. If anything, it’ll bolster your resolve to seek out sustainably-raised, pastured/grass-fed animal products whenever you can.

Pretty Much Everything to Do with Poop

This is one of the more perplexing habits of most plant-based dieters I’ve encountered. They love waxing poetic on defecation and exploring the day-to-day variations in consistency, frequency, texture, odor, and volume. It’s really something to behold. I almost suggest spending a day in the local vegan cafe just to eavesdrop.

But if you can bear with it, you might indirectly learn about the importance of gut health. A large percentage of poop, after all, is made up of gut bacteria. And if plant-based dieters are proud of the prominence of their feces, they may be doing something right on the gut bacteria front.

Several years back, the media made a huge fuss over a study that claimed to show plant-based diets lead to better gut health and gut biome diversity than diets containing meat. The “meat diet” was a bit of a strawman in that it contained nothing but cheese and cured meats—no fiber at all—but the fact remains that the plant-based diet resulted in a diverse, apparently healthy gut biome.

Take that to heart, and eat some fibrous plant matter. Nothing’s stopping you from enhancing your omnivorous diet with loads of plant matter and fermentable fiber.

How to Prepare Legumes

Legumes are kinda back on the Primal menu. Go read the post, but here’s the gist:

They’re full of fermentable fiber.

They’re quite nutrient-dense, containing lots of folate and minerals.

They’re low in “net carbs,” especially compared to grains.

The lectins they contain are usually deactivated by soaking and/or cooking.

But you’ve been away so long that you probably don’t know how to prepare them. I’ll admit that I don’t really know either.

Check out some vegan blogs for tips and recipes. They rely so much on legumes for the protein content that they’re far more likely to understand the ins and outs of legume preparation and cooking.

You can easily modify the recipes to make them meatier. Add a ham hock or some salt pork (basically, just add pig parts). Use bone broth instead of activated Nepalese rainwater (or make bone broth using the rainwater).

That Humans are Incredible

Take most other animals and put them on a weirdo diet that strays from their biological foundation, and you’ll have a whole bunch of dead animals in a few weeks. They’re fragile. They’re rigid. Dogs could do all right, but that’s because they co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years. And the omnivores like bears would do okay on a range of diets. But gorillas? Pandas? Tigers? No way.

Humans can eat just about anything. From Inuit to tropical hunter-gatherers to Swiss dairy farmers to ketogenic dieters to Pacific Islanders to Incan potato farmers to kale-eating highlanders, the range of viable human dietary practices boggles the mind.

No diet is more evolutionarily novel than the vegan diet. There are no known records of successful or even factual vegan groups living before last century. Vegetarian, sure. Vegan for a short period of time due to food shortages, of course. But full-time elective vegans? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

Yet, there are successful vegans living today. Healthy ones. I might think they can all benefit from an oyster or an egg or a piece of liver or two every now and again, but they’re out there and they exemplify the stunning adaptability of the human animal.

So, head down to the local vegan cafe and grab a salad or a bowl (most vegan places hate industrial seed oils as much as we do). I can honestly say I’ve had some genuinely fantastic meals at vegan restaurants.

Talk to the vegan clerk at the health food store for some tips on new veggies to try and how to prepare them.

Pick the brain of the ripped vegan lifter at your gym. What’s his or her secret?

Above all else, don’t ignore good advice and wisdom because of the source. The Primal Blueprint is an opportunist’s way of eating and living. We take what works from ancestral traditions, present-day populations, and modern science to form the best possible lifestyle. That list of influences has to include plant-based dieters—because every group with any kind of success (well, almost every group) has something to offer.

That’s it for me, folks. I think those are some very important lessons, but I’m sure there are more I missed. What have you learned from plant-based diets and dieters?

Thanks for reading and take care!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[fishermariawo]

What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters)

I joke around a lot and give them hell, but I have love and respect for plant-based diets and the people who eat them. These folks come at health from an entirely different place, and, it’s true, I don’t think their diets are optimal. I think they get a lot wrong. They often misconstrue what Primal is all about. I’ve even received threats from some of the less grounded members of the community, though I know that these are the outliers, the extremists, and I never took them seriously.

But…I’d also suggest plant-based dieters get a lot right. More than you’d think.

I’m not talking about the pastatarians, of course, or the junk food vegans, or the vegetarians who subsist entirely on pizza and Tofurkey. I’m talking about the ones eating loads of veggies. Actual vegetarians and vegans who eat actual plants.

They can learn a ton from us. That’s true. We can learn a lot from them, too. Today, I wanted to discuss just what I’ve learned and what we can learn from plant-based diets.

How to Maximize Nutrition from Subpar Sources

Being a vegan is hard work. Being a healthy vegan is even harder. We Primal types have it easy. We can really let the nutrient-density fall by the wayside because we can always fall back on a few pastured eggs, a quarter pound of beef liver, some wild salmon, a good steak, some oysters and mussels. Someone on a plant-based diet doesn’t have that luxury. They can’t rely on whey protein or ground beef for high-quality bioavailable protein; they have to combine legumes and grains to get the right mix of amino acids. They can’t get all the zinc and iron they’ll ever need from a half dozen oysters.

They have to comb the literature for nuts and seeds high in each and make sure not to eat too much iron-binding calcium or zinc-interfering copper at the same meal. They can’t eat long-chain omega-3s directly (unless they eat algae); they must make it out of ALA.

Imagine if you ate both high-quality animal foods and maximized the nutrition from plant sources. You’d be unstoppable.

Which Esoteric Leafy Greens You Should Try

There’s a clearly-vegan woman I often see at the farmer’s market. We’ve never spoken about our respective diets (contrary to popular belief, not all vegans immediately announce their dietary ideology), but it’s obvious from the dreadlocks, piercings, waif’s physique, blue/purple/green hair, and (more to the point) basket bulging with green things.

We do talk about what she’s got in that basket though. She’s always digging up the most interesting leafy greens, and I’m quick to ask for recommendations. Without her, I wouldn’t know about star spinach, or purslane (I figured it was just a weed; turns out it’s high in omega-3s, magnesium, and calcium), or sweet potato leaves (I’ve read about their use in Africa while researching for the blog but never actually had them), or the multitude of Asian greens. If you want to move past spinach, kale, chard, and lettuce, ask the only hominids who put down several pounds of leafy greens daily.

Why Low-Carb, High-Fat Didn’t Work For You

I’m on record as claiming that low-carb, high-fat Primal ways of eating are the simplest, most effective way to lose body fat for the most people. Hell, I’m about to release a book predicated on the notion that becoming fat-adapted is great for your health, performance, and longevity. But I’ll also admit that it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t do well on this type of macronutrient ratio. And that’s fine.

In her excellent presentation at AHS14, entitled “Lessons from the Vegans,” Denise Minger explained how some people who don’t thrive on low-carb, high-fat can actually prosper on low-fat, high-carb diets. But here’s the catch: They should be truly low-fat, as in sub-10% of calories from fat. Anything more, Denise cautions, and you run the risk of entering no man’s land where both fat and glucose metabolism are dysfunctional. The best example of this is the standard American diet, which contains moderate amounts of both (unhealthy) fat and carbs and fails miserably on all fronts.

It’s definitely not for me, and it won’t work for everyone or most, and you’d probably need to include animal foods, but you could put together a decent low-fat diet by sticking to Primal sources.

How Cruel Industrial Animal Agriculture Is

Animal well-being matters to us, but we often couch our distaste for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the substandard nutrient content of their products. Makes sense that we’d worry about the nutrition, since we’re eating so many animal foods. But there’s another reason that we shouldn’t forget.

And your average plant-based dieter certainly won’t let you forget that some of the industrial animal operations are truly repugnant. Chickens crammed in cages, beakless and miserable. Cows standing knee deep in their own manure. The actual killing is probably the most humane part, as the vast majority of animals are stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before being killed and butchered. But the life of a CAFO animal is quite miserable. If anything, it’ll bolster your resolve to seek out sustainably-raised, pastured/grass-fed animal products whenever you can.

Pretty Much Everything to Do with Poop

This is one of the more perplexing habits of most plant-based dieters I’ve encountered. They love waxing poetic on defecation and exploring the day-to-day variations in consistency, frequency, texture, odor, and volume. It’s really something to behold. I almost suggest spending a day in the local vegan cafe just to eavesdrop.

But if you can bear with it, you might indirectly learn about the importance of gut health. A large percentage of poop, after all, is made up of gut bacteria. And if plant-based dieters are proud of the prominence of their feces, they may be doing something right on the gut bacteria front.

Several years back, the media made a huge fuss over a study that claimed to show plant-based diets lead to better gut health and gut biome diversity than diets containing meat. The “meat diet” was a bit of a strawman in that it contained nothing but cheese and cured meats—no fiber at all—but the fact remains that the plant-based diet resulted in a diverse, apparently healthy gut biome.

Take that to heart, and eat some fibrous plant matter. Nothing’s stopping you from enhancing your omnivorous diet with loads of plant matter and fermentable fiber.

How to Prepare Legumes

Legumes are kinda back on the Primal menu. Go read the post, but here’s the gist:

They’re full of fermentable fiber.

They’re quite nutrient-dense, containing lots of folate and minerals.

They’re low in “net carbs,” especially compared to grains.

The lectins they contain are usually deactivated by soaking and/or cooking.

But you’ve been away so long that you probably don’t know how to prepare them. I’ll admit that I don’t really know either.

Check out some vegan blogs for tips and recipes. They rely so much on legumes for the protein content that they’re far more likely to understand the ins and outs of legume preparation and cooking.

You can easily modify the recipes to make them meatier. Add a ham hock or some salt pork (basically, just add pig parts). Use bone broth instead of activated Nepalese rainwater (or make bone broth using the rainwater).

That Humans are Incredible

Take most other animals and put them on a weirdo diet that strays from their biological foundation, and you’ll have a whole bunch of dead animals in a few weeks. They’re fragile. They’re rigid. Dogs could do all right, but that’s because they co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years. And the omnivores like bears would do okay on a range of diets. But gorillas? Pandas? Tigers? No way.

Humans can eat just about anything. From Inuit to tropical hunter-gatherers to Swiss dairy farmers to ketogenic dieters to Pacific Islanders to Incan potato farmers to kale-eating highlanders, the range of viable human dietary practices boggles the mind.

No diet is more evolutionarily novel than the vegan diet. There are no known records of successful or even factual vegan groups living before last century. Vegetarian, sure. Vegan for a short period of time due to food shortages, of course. But full-time elective vegans? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

Yet, there are successful vegans living today. Healthy ones. I might think they can all benefit from an oyster or an egg or a piece of liver or two every now and again, but they’re out there and they exemplify the stunning adaptability of the human animal.

So, head down to the local vegan cafe and grab a salad or a bowl (most vegan places hate industrial seed oils as much as we do). I can honestly say I’ve had some genuinely fantastic meals at vegan restaurants.

Talk to the vegan clerk at the health food store for some tips on new veggies to try and how to prepare them.

Pick the brain of the ripped vegan lifter at your gym. What’s his or her secret?

Above all else, don’t ignore good advice and wisdom because of the source. The Primal Blueprint is an opportunist’s way of eating and living. We take what works from ancestral traditions, present-day populations, and modern science to form the best possible lifestyle. That list of influences has to include plant-based dieters—because every group with any kind of success (well, almost every group) has something to offer.

That’s it for me, folks. I think those are some very important lessons, but I’m sure there are more I missed. What have you learned from plant-based diets and dieters?

Thanks for reading and take care!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[watsonrodriquezie]

What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters)

I joke around a lot and give them hell, but I have love and respect for plant-based diets and the people who eat them. These folks come at health from an entirely different place, and, it’s true, I don’t think their diets are optimal. I think they get a lot wrong. They often misconstrue what Primal is all about. I’ve even received threats from some of the less grounded members of the community, though I know that these are the outliers, the extremists, and I never took them seriously.

But…I’d also suggest plant-based dieters get a lot right. More than you’d think.

I’m not talking about the pastatarians, of course, or the junk food vegans, or the vegetarians who subsist entirely on pizza and Tofurkey. I’m talking about the ones eating loads of veggies. Actual vegetarians and vegans who eat actual plants.

They can learn a ton from us. That’s true. We can learn a lot from them, too. Today, I wanted to discuss just what I’ve learned and what we can learn from plant-based diets.

How to Maximize Nutrition from Subpar Sources

Being a vegan is hard work. Being a healthy vegan is even harder. We Primal types have it easy. We can really let the nutrient-density fall by the wayside because we can always fall back on a few pastured eggs, a quarter pound of beef liver, some wild salmon, a good steak, some oysters and mussels. Someone on a plant-based diet doesn’t have that luxury. They can’t rely on whey protein or ground beef for high-quality bioavailable protein; they have to combine legumes and grains to get the right mix of amino acids. They can’t get all the zinc and iron they’ll ever need from a half dozen oysters.

They have to comb the literature for nuts and seeds high in each and make sure not to eat too much iron-binding calcium or zinc-interfering copper at the same meal. They can’t eat long-chain omega-3s directly (unless they eat algae); they must make it out of ALA.

Imagine if you ate both high-quality animal foods and maximized the nutrition from plant sources. You’d be unstoppable.

Which Esoteric Leafy Greens You Should Try

There’s a clearly-vegan woman I often see at the farmer’s market. We’ve never spoken about our respective diets (contrary to popular belief, not all vegans immediately announce their dietary ideology), but it’s obvious from the dreadlocks, piercings, waif’s physique, blue/purple/green hair, and (more to the point) basket bulging with green things.

We do talk about what she’s got in that basket though. She’s always digging up the most interesting leafy greens, and I’m quick to ask for recommendations. Without her, I wouldn’t know about star spinach, or purslane (I figured it was just a weed; turns out it’s high in omega-3s, magnesium, and calcium), or sweet potato leaves (I’ve read about their use in Africa while researching for the blog but never actually had them), or the multitude of Asian greens. If you want to move past spinach, kale, chard, and lettuce, ask the only hominids who put down several pounds of leafy greens daily.

Why Low-Carb, High-Fat Didn’t Work For You

I’m on record as claiming that low-carb, high-fat Primal ways of eating are the simplest, most effective way to lose body fat for the most people. Hell, I’m about to release a book predicated on the notion that becoming fat-adapted is great for your health, performance, and longevity. But I’ll also admit that it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t do well on this type of macronutrient ratio. And that’s fine.

In her excellent presentation at AHS14, entitled “Lessons from the Vegans,” Denise Minger explained how some people who don’t thrive on low-carb, high-fat can actually prosper on low-fat, high-carb diets. But here’s the catch: They should be truly low-fat, as in sub-10% of calories from fat. Anything more, Denise cautions, and you run the risk of entering no man’s land where both fat and glucose metabolism are dysfunctional. The best example of this is the standard American diet, which contains moderate amounts of both (unhealthy) fat and carbs and fails miserably on all fronts.

It’s definitely not for me, and it won’t work for everyone or most, and you’d probably need to include animal foods, but you could put together a decent low-fat diet by sticking to Primal sources.

How Cruel Industrial Animal Agriculture Is

Animal well-being matters to us, but we often couch our distaste for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the substandard nutrient content of their products. Makes sense that we’d worry about the nutrition, since we’re eating so many animal foods. But there’s another reason that we shouldn’t forget.

And your average plant-based dieter certainly won’t let you forget that some of the industrial animal operations are truly repugnant. Chickens crammed in cages, beakless and miserable. Cows standing knee deep in their own manure. The actual killing is probably the most humane part, as the vast majority of animals are stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before being killed and butchered. But the life of a CAFO animal is quite miserable. If anything, it’ll bolster your resolve to seek out sustainably-raised, pastured/grass-fed animal products whenever you can.

Pretty Much Everything to Do with Poop

This is one of the more perplexing habits of most plant-based dieters I’ve encountered. They love waxing poetic on defecation and exploring the day-to-day variations in consistency, frequency, texture, odor, and volume. It’s really something to behold. I almost suggest spending a day in the local vegan cafe just to eavesdrop.

But if you can bear with it, you might indirectly learn about the importance of gut health. A large percentage of poop, after all, is made up of gut bacteria. And if plant-based dieters are proud of the prominence of their feces, they may be doing something right on the gut bacteria front.

Several years back, the media made a huge fuss over a study that claimed to show plant-based diets lead to better gut health and gut biome diversity than diets containing meat. The “meat diet” was a bit of a strawman in that it contained nothing but cheese and cured meats—no fiber at all—but the fact remains that the plant-based diet resulted in a diverse, apparently healthy gut biome.

Take that to heart, and eat some fibrous plant matter. Nothing’s stopping you from enhancing your omnivorous diet with loads of plant matter and fermentable fiber.

How to Prepare Legumes

Legumes are kinda back on the Primal menu. Go read the post, but here’s the gist:

They’re full of fermentable fiber.

They’re quite nutrient-dense, containing lots of folate and minerals.

They’re low in “net carbs,” especially compared to grains.

The lectins they contain are usually deactivated by soaking and/or cooking.

But you’ve been away so long that you probably don’t know how to prepare them. I’ll admit that I don’t really know either.

Check out some vegan blogs for tips and recipes. They rely so much on legumes for the protein content that they’re far more likely to understand the ins and outs of legume preparation and cooking.

You can easily modify the recipes to make them meatier. Add a ham hock or some salt pork (basically, just add pig parts). Use bone broth instead of activated Nepalese rainwater (or make bone broth using the rainwater).

That Humans are Incredible

Take most other animals and put them on a weirdo diet that strays from their biological foundation, and you’ll have a whole bunch of dead animals in a few weeks. They’re fragile. They’re rigid. Dogs could do all right, but that’s because they co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years. And the omnivores like bears would do okay on a range of diets. But gorillas? Pandas? Tigers? No way.

Humans can eat just about anything. From Inuit to tropical hunter-gatherers to Swiss dairy farmers to ketogenic dieters to Pacific Islanders to Incan potato farmers to kale-eating highlanders, the range of viable human dietary practices boggles the mind.

No diet is more evolutionarily novel than the vegan diet. There are no known records of successful or even factual vegan groups living before last century. Vegetarian, sure. Vegan for a short period of time due to food shortages, of course. But full-time elective vegans? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

Yet, there are successful vegans living today. Healthy ones. I might think they can all benefit from an oyster or an egg or a piece of liver or two every now and again, but they’re out there and they exemplify the stunning adaptability of the human animal.

So, head down to the local vegan cafe and grab a salad or a bowl (most vegan places hate industrial seed oils as much as we do). I can honestly say I’ve had some genuinely fantastic meals at vegan restaurants.

Talk to the vegan clerk at the health food store for some tips on new veggies to try and how to prepare them.

Pick the brain of the ripped vegan lifter at your gym. What’s his or her secret?

Above all else, don’t ignore good advice and wisdom because of the source. The Primal Blueprint is an opportunist’s way of eating and living. We take what works from ancestral traditions, present-day populations, and modern science to form the best possible lifestyle. That list of influences has to include plant-based dieters—because every group with any kind of success (well, almost every group) has something to offer.

That’s it for me, folks. I think those are some very important lessons, but I’m sure there are more I missed. What have you learned from plant-based diets and dieters?

Thanks for reading and take care!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[cristinajourdanqp]

What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters)

I joke around a lot and give them hell, but I have love and respect for plant-based diets and the people who eat them. These folks come at health from an entirely different place, and, it’s true, I don’t think their diets are optimal. I think they get a lot wrong. They often misconstrue what Primal is all about. I’ve even received threats from some of the less grounded members of the community, though I know that these are the outliers, the extremists, and I never took them seriously.

But…I’d also suggest plant-based dieters get a lot right. More than you’d think.

I’m not talking about the pastatarians, of course, or the junk food vegans, or the vegetarians who subsist entirely on pizza and Tofurkey. I’m talking about the ones eating loads of veggies. Actual vegetarians and vegans who eat actual plants.

They can learn a ton from us. That’s true. We can learn a lot from them, too. Today, I wanted to discuss just what I’ve learned and what we can learn from plant-based diets.

How to Maximize Nutrition from Subpar Sources

Being a vegan is hard work. Being a healthy vegan is even harder. We Primal types have it easy. We can really let the nutrient-density fall by the wayside because we can always fall back on a few pastured eggs, a quarter pound of beef liver, some wild salmon, a good steak, some oysters and mussels. Someone on a plant-based diet doesn’t have that luxury. They can’t rely on whey protein or ground beef for high-quality bioavailable protein; they have to combine legumes and grains to get the right mix of amino acids. They can’t get all the zinc and iron they’ll ever need from a half dozen oysters.

They have to comb the literature for nuts and seeds high in each and make sure not to eat too much iron-binding calcium or zinc-interfering copper at the same meal. They can’t eat long-chain omega-3s directly (unless they eat algae); they must make it out of ALA.

Imagine if you ate both high-quality animal foods and maximized the nutrition from plant sources. You’d be unstoppable.

Which Esoteric Leafy Greens You Should Try

There’s a clearly-vegan woman I often see at the farmer’s market. We’ve never spoken about our respective diets (contrary to popular belief, not all vegans immediately announce their dietary ideology), but it’s obvious from the dreadlocks, piercings, waif’s physique, blue/purple/green hair, and (more to the point) basket bulging with green things.

We do talk about what she’s got in that basket though. She’s always digging up the most interesting leafy greens, and I’m quick to ask for recommendations. Without her, I wouldn’t know about star spinach, or purslane (I figured it was just a weed; turns out it’s high in omega-3s, magnesium, and calcium), or sweet potato leaves (I’ve read about their use in Africa while researching for the blog but never actually had them), or the multitude of Asian greens. If you want to move past spinach, kale, chard, and lettuce, ask the only hominids who put down several pounds of leafy greens daily.

Why Low-Carb, High-Fat Didn’t Work For You

I’m on record as claiming that low-carb, high-fat Primal ways of eating are the simplest, most effective way to lose body fat for the most people. Hell, I’m about to release a book predicated on the notion that becoming fat-adapted is great for your health, performance, and longevity. But I’ll also admit that it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t do well on this type of macronutrient ratio. And that’s fine.

In her excellent presentation at AHS14, entitled “Lessons from the Vegans,” Denise Minger explained how some people who don’t thrive on low-carb, high-fat can actually prosper on low-fat, high-carb diets. But here’s the catch: They should be truly low-fat, as in sub-10% of calories from fat. Anything more, Denise cautions, and you run the risk of entering no man’s land where both fat and glucose metabolism are dysfunctional. The best example of this is the standard American diet, which contains moderate amounts of both (unhealthy) fat and carbs and fails miserably on all fronts.

It’s definitely not for me, and it won’t work for everyone or most, and you’d probably need to include animal foods, but you could put together a decent low-fat diet by sticking to Primal sources.

How Cruel Industrial Animal Agriculture Is

Animal well-being matters to us, but we often couch our distaste for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the substandard nutrient content of their products. Makes sense that we’d worry about the nutrition, since we’re eating so many animal foods. But there’s another reason that we shouldn’t forget.

And your average plant-based dieter certainly won’t let you forget that some of the industrial animal operations are truly repugnant. Chickens crammed in cages, beakless and miserable. Cows standing knee deep in their own manure. The actual killing is probably the most humane part, as the vast majority of animals are stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before being killed and butchered. But the life of a CAFO animal is quite miserable. If anything, it’ll bolster your resolve to seek out sustainably-raised, pastured/grass-fed animal products whenever you can.

Pretty Much Everything to Do with Poop

This is one of the more perplexing habits of most plant-based dieters I’ve encountered. They love waxing poetic on defecation and exploring the day-to-day variations in consistency, frequency, texture, odor, and volume. It’s really something to behold. I almost suggest spending a day in the local vegan cafe just to eavesdrop.

But if you can bear with it, you might indirectly learn about the importance of gut health. A large percentage of poop, after all, is made up of gut bacteria. And if plant-based dieters are proud of the prominence of their feces, they may be doing something right on the gut bacteria front.

Several years back, the media made a huge fuss over a study that claimed to show plant-based diets lead to better gut health and gut biome diversity than diets containing meat. The “meat diet” was a bit of a strawman in that it contained nothing but cheese and cured meats—no fiber at all—but the fact remains that the plant-based diet resulted in a diverse, apparently healthy gut biome.

Take that to heart, and eat some fibrous plant matter. Nothing’s stopping you from enhancing your omnivorous diet with loads of plant matter and fermentable fiber.

How to Prepare Legumes

Legumes are kinda back on the Primal menu. Go read the post, but here’s the gist:

They’re full of fermentable fiber.

They’re quite nutrient-dense, containing lots of folate and minerals.

They’re low in “net carbs,” especially compared to grains.

The lectins they contain are usually deactivated by soaking and/or cooking.

But you’ve been away so long that you probably don’t know how to prepare them. I’ll admit that I don’t really know either.

Check out some vegan blogs for tips and recipes. They rely so much on legumes for the protein content that they’re far more likely to understand the ins and outs of legume preparation and cooking.

You can easily modify the recipes to make them meatier. Add a ham hock or some salt pork (basically, just add pig parts). Use bone broth instead of activated Nepalese rainwater (or make bone broth using the rainwater).

That Humans are Incredible

Take most other animals and put them on a weirdo diet that strays from their biological foundation, and you’ll have a whole bunch of dead animals in a few weeks. They’re fragile. They’re rigid. Dogs could do all right, but that’s because they co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years. And the omnivores like bears would do okay on a range of diets. But gorillas? Pandas? Tigers? No way.

Humans can eat just about anything. From Inuit to tropical hunter-gatherers to Swiss dairy farmers to ketogenic dieters to Pacific Islanders to Incan potato farmers to kale-eating highlanders, the range of viable human dietary practices boggles the mind.

No diet is more evolutionarily novel than the vegan diet. There are no known records of successful or even factual vegan groups living before last century. Vegetarian, sure. Vegan for a short period of time due to food shortages, of course. But full-time elective vegans? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

Yet, there are successful vegans living today. Healthy ones. I might think they can all benefit from an oyster or an egg or a piece of liver or two every now and again, but they’re out there and they exemplify the stunning adaptability of the human animal.

So, head down to the local vegan cafe and grab a salad or a bowl (most vegan places hate industrial seed oils as much as we do). I can honestly say I’ve had some genuinely fantastic meals at vegan restaurants.

Talk to the vegan clerk at the health food store for some tips on new veggies to try and how to prepare them.

Pick the brain of the ripped vegan lifter at your gym. What’s his or her secret?

Above all else, don’t ignore good advice and wisdom because of the source. The Primal Blueprint is an opportunist’s way of eating and living. We take what works from ancestral traditions, present-day populations, and modern science to form the best possible lifestyle. That list of influences has to include plant-based dieters—because every group with any kind of success (well, almost every group) has something to offer.

That’s it for me, folks. I think those are some very important lessons, but I’m sure there are more I missed. What have you learned from plant-based diets and dieters?

Thanks for reading and take care!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

[cynthiamwashington]

What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters)

I joke around a lot and give them hell, but I have love and respect for plant-based diets and the people who eat them. These folks come at health from an entirely different place, and, it’s true, I don’t think their diets are optimal. I think they get a lot wrong. They often misconstrue what Primal is all about. I’ve even received threats from some of the less grounded members of the community, though I know that these are the outliers, the extremists, and I never took them seriously.

But…I’d also suggest plant-based dieters get a lot right. More than you’d think.

I’m not talking about the pastatarians, of course, or the junk food vegans, or the vegetarians who subsist entirely on pizza and Tofurkey. I’m talking about the ones eating loads of veggies. Actual vegetarians and vegans who eat actual plants.

They can learn a ton from us. That’s true. We can learn a lot from them, too. Today, I wanted to discuss just what I’ve learned and what we can learn from plant-based diets.

How to Maximize Nutrition from Subpar Sources

Being a vegan is hard work. Being a healthy vegan is even harder. We Primal types have it easy. We can really let the nutrient-density fall by the wayside because we can always fall back on a few pastured eggs, a quarter pound of beef liver, some wild salmon, a good steak, some oysters and mussels. Someone on a plant-based diet doesn’t have that luxury. They can’t rely on whey protein or ground beef for high-quality bioavailable protein; they have to combine legumes and grains to get the right mix of amino acids. They can’t get all the zinc and iron they’ll ever need from a half dozen oysters.

They have to comb the literature for nuts and seeds high in each and make sure not to eat too much iron-binding calcium or zinc-interfering copper at the same meal. They can’t eat long-chain omega-3s directly (unless they eat algae); they must make it out of ALA.

Imagine if you ate both high-quality animal foods and maximized the nutrition from plant sources. You’d be unstoppable.

Which Esoteric Leafy Greens You Should Try

There’s a clearly-vegan woman I often see at the farmer’s market. We’ve never spoken about our respective diets (contrary to popular belief, not all vegans immediately announce their dietary ideology), but it’s obvious from the dreadlocks, piercings, waif’s physique, blue/purple/green hair, and (more to the point) basket bulging with green things.

We do talk about what she’s got in that basket though. She’s always digging up the most interesting leafy greens, and I’m quick to ask for recommendations. Without her, I wouldn’t know about star spinach, or purslane (I figured it was just a weed; turns out it’s high in omega-3s, magnesium, and calcium), or sweet potato leaves (I’ve read about their use in Africa while researching for the blog but never actually had them), or the multitude of Asian greens. If you want to move past spinach, kale, chard, and lettuce, ask the only hominids who put down several pounds of leafy greens daily.

Why Low-Carb, High-Fat Didn’t Work For You

I’m on record as claiming that low-carb, high-fat Primal ways of eating are the simplest, most effective way to lose body fat for the most people. Hell, I’m about to release a book predicated on the notion that becoming fat-adapted is great for your health, performance, and longevity. But I’ll also admit that it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t do well on this type of macronutrient ratio. And that’s fine.

In her excellent presentation at AHS14, entitled “Lessons from the Vegans,” Denise Minger explained how some people who don’t thrive on low-carb, high-fat can actually prosper on low-fat, high-carb diets. But here’s the catch: They should be truly low-fat, as in sub-10% of calories from fat. Anything more, Denise cautions, and you run the risk of entering no man’s land where both fat and glucose metabolism are dysfunctional. The best example of this is the standard American diet, which contains moderate amounts of both (unhealthy) fat and carbs and fails miserably on all fronts.

It’s definitely not for me, and it won’t work for everyone or most, and you’d probably need to include animal foods, but you could put together a decent low-fat diet by sticking to Primal sources.

How Cruel Industrial Animal Agriculture Is

Animal well-being matters to us, but we often couch our distaste for CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) in the substandard nutrient content of their products. Makes sense that we’d worry about the nutrition, since we’re eating so many animal foods. But there’s another reason that we shouldn’t forget.

And your average plant-based dieter certainly won’t let you forget that some of the industrial animal operations are truly repugnant. Chickens crammed in cages, beakless and miserable. Cows standing knee deep in their own manure. The actual killing is probably the most humane part, as the vast majority of animals are stunned or otherwise rendered unconscious before being killed and butchered. But the life of a CAFO animal is quite miserable. If anything, it’ll bolster your resolve to seek out sustainably-raised, pastured/grass-fed animal products whenever you can.

Pretty Much Everything to Do with Poop

This is one of the more perplexing habits of most plant-based dieters I’ve encountered. They love waxing poetic on defecation and exploring the day-to-day variations in consistency, frequency, texture, odor, and volume. It’s really something to behold. I almost suggest spending a day in the local vegan cafe just to eavesdrop.

But if you can bear with it, you might indirectly learn about the importance of gut health. A large percentage of poop, after all, is made up of gut bacteria. And if plant-based dieters are proud of the prominence of their feces, they may be doing something right on the gut bacteria front.

Several years back, the media made a huge fuss over a study that claimed to show plant-based diets lead to better gut health and gut biome diversity than diets containing meat. The “meat diet” was a bit of a strawman in that it contained nothing but cheese and cured meats—no fiber at all—but the fact remains that the plant-based diet resulted in a diverse, apparently healthy gut biome.

Take that to heart, and eat some fibrous plant matter. Nothing’s stopping you from enhancing your omnivorous diet with loads of plant matter and fermentable fiber.

How to Prepare Legumes

Legumes are kinda back on the Primal menu. Go read the post, but here’s the gist:

They’re full of fermentable fiber.

They’re quite nutrient-dense, containing lots of folate and minerals.

They’re low in “net carbs,” especially compared to grains.

The lectins they contain are usually deactivated by soaking and/or cooking.

But you’ve been away so long that you probably don’t know how to prepare them. I’ll admit that I don’t really know either.

Check out some vegan blogs for tips and recipes. They rely so much on legumes for the protein content that they’re far more likely to understand the ins and outs of legume preparation and cooking.

You can easily modify the recipes to make them meatier. Add a ham hock or some salt pork (basically, just add pig parts). Use bone broth instead of activated Nepalese rainwater (or make bone broth using the rainwater).

That Humans are Incredible

Take most other animals and put them on a weirdo diet that strays from their biological foundation, and you’ll have a whole bunch of dead animals in a few weeks. They’re fragile. They’re rigid. Dogs could do all right, but that’s because they co-evolved with humans for tens of thousands of years. And the omnivores like bears would do okay on a range of diets. But gorillas? Pandas? Tigers? No way.

Humans can eat just about anything. From Inuit to tropical hunter-gatherers to Swiss dairy farmers to ketogenic dieters to Pacific Islanders to Incan potato farmers to kale-eating highlanders, the range of viable human dietary practices boggles the mind.

No diet is more evolutionarily novel than the vegan diet. There are no known records of successful or even factual vegan groups living before last century. Vegetarian, sure. Vegan for a short period of time due to food shortages, of course. But full-time elective vegans? Nope. It just didn’t happen.

Yet, there are successful vegans living today. Healthy ones. I might think they can all benefit from an oyster or an egg or a piece of liver or two every now and again, but they’re out there and they exemplify the stunning adaptability of the human animal.

So, head down to the local vegan cafe and grab a salad or a bowl (most vegan places hate industrial seed oils as much as we do). I can honestly say I’ve had some genuinely fantastic meals at vegan restaurants.

Talk to the vegan clerk at the health food store for some tips on new veggies to try and how to prepare them.

Pick the brain of the ripped vegan lifter at your gym. What’s his or her secret?

Above all else, don’t ignore good advice and wisdom because of the source. The Primal Blueprint is an opportunist’s way of eating and living. We take what works from ancestral traditions, present-day populations, and modern science to form the best possible lifestyle. That list of influences has to include plant-based dieters—because every group with any kind of success (well, almost every group) has something to offer.

That’s it for me, folks. I think those are some very important lessons, but I’m sure there are more I missed. What have you learned from plant-based diets and dieters?

Thanks for reading and take care!

Want to make fat loss easier? Try the Definitive Guide for Troubleshooting Weight Loss for free here.

The post What Primal Types Can Learn from Plant-Based Diets (and Dieters) appeared first on Mark's Daily Apple.

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