HEALTH
procuring extremely large mammals . When I say extremely large we ’ re talking megafauna : woolly mammoths , mastodons , giant aurochs , Irish elk , wooly rhino ’ s , and all these other huge animals that all sort of cataclysmically disappeared at the end of the last ice age , but which had a huge complement of body fat we coveted .
Miriam : Given our current agricultural system , how do we adapt our diets to the best kind of nutrition for ourselves ?
Nora : Here ’ s the deal , this is actually the second part of your previous question regarding “ if we eat a fat-based diet will we lose weight ” and that kind of a thing . You need to understand that most of the studies that have attempted to demonstrate the deleterious effects of fats and saturated fats on human health have always been within the context of high carbohydrate diets . The problem is you can ’ t have it both ways - you can ’ t have a high carbohydrate diet and also add a lot of fats to that . The combination is like a metabolic time bomb . Sugar is like a lit fuse and fat is the powder keg . And fats are not the culprits to blame . We actually have a biological NEED and fundamental dietary requirement for fat . We have no such established human dietary requirement for carbohydrate in any form .
Blood sugar surges ( and insulin release ) also generate a lot of damaging free radicals and glycation .
Now , we do know that the human body naturally produces a certain amount of free radicals that it needs to in order for certain metabolic functions to occur . Similarly , there is something called enzymatically controlled glycation that is also necessary for certain metabolic processes . That ’ s very different from unbridled free radical activity as a result of toxic exposures , or unbridled glycation as a result of a high sugar and starch diet that absolutely does show deleterious health effects and prematurely ages you .
Part of what differentiates my approach from a lot of other popular “ eat fat to burn fat ” ketogenic diets out there is that food quality is essential to the equation . I also take the exploding and increasingly pervasive phenomenon of autoimmunity very much into account ( an area of significant expertise and heavy research for me ), which most other approaches to this simply don ’ t .
Miriam : I guess that ’ s the bottom line really . What is so helpful in your book is that you offer a whole bunch of recipes to give people a starting place to switch to this kind of diet .
Nora : Yes . While my previous book , Primal Body , Primal Mind , has become an international bestseller , one of the things that came my way a lot with that book was that people really wanted a meal plan , they wanted recipes . I don ’ t necessar-
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