Just for the sake of having said I tried it, I gave the Taubes diet one week. F-minus.

I have never in my life felt more devoid of energy, a fact I noticed when I was trying to walk through the grocery store, pushing an empty shopping cart and noticing I was shuffling like I was ninety years old. Unsurprisingly, I gained weight. Which is why I refused to continue the diet past the first week, when I had originally planned to try it for three weeks.

I had gone three days without a single bowel movement, and don't tell me I wasn't eating enough fat. Breakfast was two strips of bacon and two eggs fried in the grease. Lunch was a bacon-wrapped sirloin and dinner was two frozen beef patties.

Taubes diet is a war on common sense. Everything, and I do mean EVERYTHING about human anatomy suggests plainly we are not carnivores. Our teeth are designed like a herbivore's. We have a long digestive tract, unlike a carnivore's who have short digestive tract and a stomach with 20 times the acidity of our own. We cannot, unlike a typical predator, digest bone matter and animal hides. We have to cook our meat, which fuses the amino acids making protein harder to absorb.

We don't have claws or fangs to suggest that meat is our natural food. We are slower moving than most animals which suggests we weren't designed to chase down prey. We have color vision, plus we're designed perpendicular to the ground, which suggests we were intended to be attracted to fruit.

For all I know, Taubes diet might be perfect for those whose idea of exercise is to walk out to the car to drive to work, but it will not support an active lifestyle. I slogged through my workouts in a near-torpor. When I went biking, it felt like the roads were coated in Elmer's glue.

I have sampled many diets in my life, and Taubes' is by far the most unpalatable, and the most physically draining I have ever tried.

My personal favorite? Carb addicts' diet. Because there's literally nothing you can't have, at least in moderation. You get two meals of equal portions of meat and a low carb vegetable. And you get a third meal that is basically the same thing, plus a salad and a third equal portion of anything you want.

Sorry, Amy. Perhaps it's my active lifestyle, perhaps it's my metabolism. But it didn't work for me. It was total disaster.

No, it doesn't always come out just fine. From personal experience fruits and veggies are definitely needed.

Just my thoughts.

Patrick,
I'll not gainsay your experience but one point: We are omnivores, not carnivores, not herbivores.

I've been on the diet for around 5 weeks. I've lost 10 pounds. I feel much better in many ways. Less hungry, more energetic, and more focused. I was just last night regaling my poor cousin with the state of my bowel, which is fantastic, in the sense that I never think of it any more. No gas, no bloating, no constipation, and there was all that and more before.

Also, I have been having hot flashes several times a night and occasionally in the daytime for a couple of years. They are very unpleasant, like being on fire from the inside, but I was resigned to living with them. Yesterday, it occurred to me that I can't recall when I had the last one. They just stopped sometime in the last week or so. I know correlation is not causation, so the diet may not be related, but I certainly feel well.

Oddly, one of the most difficult aspects of the diet is how effectively we have all been brainwashed into the low fat/high fiber mindset. I had to actually remind myself not to drain out all the bacon fat, and tell myself that it was okay to eat the whole lamb chop, including the fat. I went so far as to purchase Metamucil, because I just "knew" I would be constipated. My mother reminded me that, before the high fiber craze, the cure for constipation was a spoon full of mineral oil. Always listen to your mother.

I'm beginning to re-think everything I think I know regarding health, diet and medical advice. I have no idea whether this is giving me high cholesterol, and it's never been an issue for me, but if the medical advice on diet can be so incredibly mistaken, why should I trust that the sat fat/heart disease/high cholesterol science is correct? It's certainly deeply intertwined with the high fiber/low fat advice. I'm going with feeling great. And throwing out my fat pants.

G'Morning Amy- As fond as you are of bacon, I thought I'd tell you about our newest favorite. It's called "vacon", or venison bacon. It's half ground venison, half ground pork (the pork s. be 80/20 meat/fat ratio) All the glorious flavor of bacon, more protein, less grease loss.

Sorry Patrick, what I've been learning the last few semesters between nutrition, Anatomy and Physiology, and pediatric development tells me that we are in fact meant to eat meat. Unless you're implying that we're evolving away from that sort of thing....

"We cannot, unlike a typical predator, digest bone matter and animal hides." I find this interesting, and not from an argumentative point, I'm wondering if "hide" is distinctive from "hair". We frequently find coyote scat that is full of fur. Is it that they digest the dermis as the hide and the fur passes through?

Why is everyone reading my post and suggesting that I'm saying we're meant to be strict vegans? I said we're not carnivores, and we're not. I said we have the dental hardware of a herbivore, and we do.

I said nothing about not being omnivorous. Our nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, the bonobos, are almost purely vegetarians, but not exclusively. In fact, in captivity, they practice cannibalism. (Maybe prison inmates should start eating each other. Think of the problems that would solve!)

If the scat is showing hair but not the accompanying dermis, then apparently the hair is resistant to stomach acids.

People who go on low-fat diets are robbing their brains. Your brain needs fat for proper functioning. Also, my doctor told me many years ago to check all the low-fat labels and you'd see how the carbs double in the low-fat items. Why is that? He felt it was because carbs are addicting and it would keep you coming back for more. He never allowed his family to eat anything low-fat. And as far as feeling lethargic the first week of this diet plan goes, give it a few more days. Its a change to your body and the lethargy is a reaction. Once you adjust, usually after a week, you will feel much lighter and more energetic.

If it were not for the protien our ancestors ate as pre hoinids and early homonids we would not have developed a brain that raises (some of)us above that of chimps.

The reason you dont see humand with carnivours teeth is the same reason you dont see us with true herbevore teeth. They keep getting smaller as do our jaws due to the fact that we cook almost all of our food - even those items which dont require it.
As an experiment have you ever tried eating unprocesed grains?

As such we dont need the massive jaw musles we once did, we dont need the huge teeth you see in true herbivores, we dont need the sturdiness of teeth you see in rodents prying open nuts.

Human eveolution is no longer primarily effected by nature by in how we choose to interact with and control the world around us.

The Lovely Goddess writes: They replace the fat with sugar. I once, by accident, ate a lowfat pastry at Starbucks and I was ragingly, angrily hungry in about 20 minutes.

Oh, yes. I remember you telling us that story. They mismarked the low-fat pastries as regular fat. I remember suggesting then that you should have simply eaten the counter clerk who sold you the pastry. That would have solved both problems: your hunger and his incompetence.

There is one thing I will say for Taubes. He correctly states that processed carbs, such as white flour and sugar are the culprits. Indeed they are. Mono and di-saccharides (sugar), such as table sugar and white flour are quickly absorbed into the blood, causing the pancreas to produce an overabundance of insulin.

Fat is one of the things that slows down the absorption of carbohydrates. So, a low-fat pastry basically is a pile of simple sugar. It is totally unsurprising that Amy was ravenous in twenty minutes after eating that.

I was on a low carb diet for several months just for fun a couple of years ago, and never felt better or lighter. Unfortunately, with my busy day to day life (I know, we all have one!), I haven't kept it up. It is just that microwavable food, as revolting as it is, is so easy, but so full of the carbs. I need to get focused and plan my shopping and cooking to feed us right.

Honestly, the Taubes/Atkins conclusions are not so revolutionary. Atkins and Taubes are very pro-veg, by the way. If you just cut out sugar, white flour, potatoes, pasta, and rice, and go back to the classic "meat and two veg" of yesteryear, you will feel a lot better. Unfortunately, on account of the advice of idiot nutritionists, we are instead flooded with low fat, high carb, and completely unnatural products.

For me the downfall is the accessibility to fast food. Fat is great, unless you eat it with carbs. Even alcohol can be dealt with on a low carb diet, but otherwise, your low-carb, but highly calorific wine will go straight to your butt.

Patrick may have felt bad because cutting carbs seriously changes your metabolic cycle. Although I had no problems, it is a severe change between glucose metabolism and trigliceride metabolism. If you are at all incline, I would recommend that you give it at least two weeks, Patrick. But I am not sporty, so you may have a different experience than me.

OK, Amy, I'm in. Been feeling exhausted so why not, right? It'll take me forever to read Taubes book (tho I will). Meantime, can you give me your typical menu to follow (I don't mind eating the same thing daily; I'm a creature of habit). Just please tell me I can have broccoli, asparagus, and the like (I have a special nutrient deficiency and need them in abundance in my diet or have to take pills, which I'd rather not). Also is there a fruit you eat?

I'll start Monday. Meantime I promised the kids pancakes for lunch. And I suppose that's another reason not to have children. The stuff is in the house!

it is chemically impossible for the cholesterol you eat to become cholesterol in your blood or have any affect whatsoever on its levels. your liver produces more cholesterol in one day to make pretty much every hormone you need than you could eat in a year if ALL you ate was crisco. which is vegetable oil. anyway. and, furthermore, there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that high cholesterol causes heart attacks/strokes. plaque in arteries has cholesterol in it; it also has white blood cells and other crap. intelligent people believe that the arteries were originally damaged by stress, virus, something unidentified, and the presence of cholesterol is the body's way of trying to heal the damage. the presence of the white blood cells supports that theory quite a bit. and most of the body's self-repair mechanisms will kill you if they go on too long.
furthermore, patrick, fyi, cats are obviously carnivores. they can't digest hair either, hence the hairballs. that's why they eat grass - grass is poisonous to cats and dogs, it makes them puke. they eat it so they can puke up the hairball instead of letting it clog up their intestines. lucky us. and we don't HAVE to cook our meat. we just do, because a) it tastes better and b) we know about worms and don't want them. wild carnivores (including stray cats and a lot of farm dogs) have worms and live quite peacefully with them. just fyi. if you don't like the diet that's fine. :)

Here's my common-sense take on the whole thing.

Saying you don't need exercise is bullshit. Lazy mofos. If you don't have a job (for example, shoveling concrete or delivering mail on foot across the African tundra) where you get exercise, you are stuck doing it as a part-time job. But find something you enjoy, and it feels less like a part-time job and more like a hobby. Biking is lovely, and during the colder months, try running. Running takes some getting used to. I have great cardiovascular strength and strong legs (from all the biking), but my connective tissue and small, supporting muscles in the feet and hips have never experienced anything other than the fluid motion of biking, or an elliptical machine. Beating the pavement feels like punishment. However, they will adapt, over time. (This is why I am a "beginning runner.")

Running is a great core strengthener. Couple it with some Pilates or yoga, and you will have six-pack abs. My hope is that it will be an effective compensator for the disc I have degenerating between lumbars 4 and 5 in my back. (That way I can bike more. Biking taxes your back, but doesn't do much to strengthen it.) You start by going for 30 minutes, run one minute, walk two, until you have run for ten minutes and walked twenty. (Then walk however long you need to in order go complete your loop.) Gradually increase the running by a minute. Pay attention to what hurts, and how you feel - go at whatever pace you need to, without being lazy.

For this, you will need carbs and yes you will eat more. Don't you WANT to eat more? But (and here's where I salute Taubes) get your carbs from fruits and veggies. Common sense should tell you to cut out the cinnamon rolls, ice cream, non-diet soda, and potato chips. You should be cutting those things out at the beginning. Get your naughty carbs from your pizza crust and cut out the junk food.

The main thing to long-term health is to get *variety* in your diet. Get your fat from eggs, peanut butter, olives - not potato chips or fast food. Get your carbs from fruits and veggies - not from cookies, bread, or pasta.

You will end up being someone who gets a lot of exercise and enjoys a wide variety of foods. Patrick's story makes me cringe - what the hell is wrong with eating an apple, an orange, or an entire package of broccoli, if you're starved for carbs? People don't get fat by eating those things. For chrissake. You don't cut out the carbs, you pay attention to where you are getting them from. And then burn the suckers off.

I'm with you, Patrick. I get a lot of exercise, too. It has never been my goal to live a life devoid of exercise. That's just pure horseshit.

Oh, and if you want to keep looking young while doing all that running or cycling outside? Don't forget the damn sunscreen! Leathery, sagging brown skin stretched over muscles has never been my idea of attractive. Want to keep looking good into your 40s, and you have to keep the sun away, if you are caucasian. (Yes, I know that a tan takes five pounds off of your appearance and accentuates muscles. I'm over it.)

I have never gone on a diet in the sense of a short term diet to lose weight and then revert to my normal eating. I will make gradual changes with the idea that these are permanent.

About a month ago, my wife and I began to eliminate as much sugar as possible from our diets. No more ice cream after supper and no stopping for a chocolate bar on the way home. We still have some sugar when we use salad dressings and condiments. Check the labels and you'll find that the second or third ingredient is often dextrose or glucose. We started drinking Yerba Mate tea in the afternoons instead of a flavoured coffee.

We also eat fewer carbs. I'll still have whole wheat toast for breakfast during the week and an apple for a snack, but no potatoes or rice. I keep cut broccoli, cauliflower and peppers in the fridge to have instead of a cereal bar.

In the last month, I've lost 5 - 6 lbs and I feel great. Neither of us are obese, so we don`t see a need to make drastic changes, but the changes we have made are relatively painless and we are seeing results.

It`s our Thanksgiving this weekend, so we will be hosting a dinner tomorrow and going to another on Monday. I`ll be having one spoonfull of potatoes and one or maybe two pieces of pumpkin pie. If I tried to stick to a strict no sugar, no carb diet, I would likely just say ``screw it`` at some point and give up. If I cut down my sugar by 90% and cut out the worst carbs and only have the slower acting carbs once in a while, I`ll have a healthy diet that I can keep up, hopefully forever.

Totally off topic, but I made the BEST lobster bisque today, and the only thing "bad" that I put in it was the heavy cream. But damn, this bisque is GOOD. o.O

Your lobster bisque sounds delicious, Flynne.

As for diets and what to eat or not: I'm an omnivore. I eat it all, babes. No lactose intolerance or peanut allergies here.

When I feel like losing some weight, I'm a calorie-counting omnivore. That is what works for me. If I try to cut out a particular food, that's what I crave (and I always give in).

As for exercise, I walk and work. I don't drive, because I don't like driving, but I can and do walk for miles. I do yard work, move furniture around, whatever.

Whoops, halftime is over. Good luck deciding what to eat and what not to eat, guys.

After reading Taubes' book, I too concluded that low carb is healthiest. People need to realize this is not a diet book or a collection of opinions. It's hundreds and hundreds of pages of studies and history. Utterly convincing.

I then changed my breakfast from sweetened yogurt or toast with various spreads to bacon and eggs and cheese, every single morning. I never get tired of it, have lots of energy and don't get hungry again until mid-afternoon, and then only slightly. Almost a year of that and I'm 15 pounds lighter than I was before I changed my breakfast. No constipation experienced. And I hardly exercise--just walk a lot and do a short Pilates routine every couple days.

As for the rest of my diet, I still put sugar in my coffee and have a little dessert every day. I'll often make myself a greasy hamburger patty with a spinach salad for dinner, but in a restaurant I may order a pasta or rice dish. I've done the cheese and salami in a baggie thing on the go but sometimes I grab a sandwich instead. I seem able to get away with this as far as my weight and just feeling good in general. I'm still a bit too lazy and sugar-addicted to go further. But I hope my experience shows that greatly reducing your carbs and increasing your fat at breakfast alone can make a big difference.

Oddly, one of the most difficult aspects of the diet is how effectively we have all been brainwashed into the low fat/high fiber mindset. I had to actually remind myself not to drain out all the bacon fat, and tell myself that it was okay to eat the whole lamb chop, including the fat.

Even Taubes will tell you (and maybe has been quoted in interviews) saying that as he eats his morning bacon and eggs that he can't quite believe he's not giving himself heart disease.

And PS I only stopped exercising entirely for a brief sabbatical known as Book Hell -- the three weeks before the book went to press. I generally lift little weights with my hands and feet and ride a bike while watching stuff on TV. Latest fave -- Darwin's Dangerous Idea. Also love House.

First-time poster and long time lurker here, who read Taubes's book on Amy's recommendation several months ago and decided to try low-carb. (I wasn't in poor health, but I did feel awfully lethargic, and I had been gaining weight because I was eating crap and working too much.) Three months later, I'm 26 pounds lighter and feel much, much better. Despite the low-carb reputation as the "meat and cheese" diet, I'm eating a lot more vegetables than I did before, because I can cook them properly and they taste so good! I don't get hungry any more, and I think I *look* healthier. My fingernails, hair, and skin all look better. So...thanks, Amy. :)

It's funny that you mention fiber and digestion because mine has gotten a lot better since I began eating meat, lots of healthy fats (butter and coconut oil), tons of cheese and cut out grains and beans. I used to have very painful gas and acid reflux and they are gone. I also have much more energy and have lost about 40 pounds. So the more people hear about Taubes book the better.

Variety helps. I lost 37 lbs since last October exercising and eating semi-right. Probably the kicker for me was to keep South Beach Diet Meal Bars in my home, office, and computer case.

I've never been on the South Beach Diet, so don't know if it's good or not. But the bars seem healthy enough, and for all those times (we all have them) when we have to eat, a healthy diet bar beats the number 1 at McDonalds.

They are pricey unless you buy them from Amazon grocery, in which case they are painfully cheap, especially if you use Amazon Prime and get free shipping. Use subscribe and save and save 15%, for a box of 12 I pay $18.51. Go to Amazon thru Amy's site and she can afford to eat Flynne's lobster bisque...

i fully believe in the fact that this taubes guy is right. absolutely. but i won't follow the diet. it's my own personal suicide. i love ice cream, i'm a little bit lactose intolerant and i won't give it up. i love the bread part of my sandwiches. i love cookies. i love cookies a lot. and i hate exercise. consequently i'm chubby, i have no energy, i have lots of heartburn.....but i recognize that this is all my own stupid fault and i'm trying to change.....really.....i love ice cream......

I had ice cream tonight -- a small serving of it at Monsieur Marcel. Last time I had it (or any dessert) was about a week and a half ago, last time Gregg left for Detroit. I used to eat ice cream every day (not huge quantities - about a pint of Haagen-Dazs choc-choc chip a week, and a cookie here and there, and a piece of chocolate here and there). But, really, I feel so amazing eating this way that I just can't go back -- and eating the rare dessert, they're that much better.

The one thing I do have to do is carry around a bag of sliced salami so I don't get hungry if I'm out all day. But there are all sorts of ways, in an emergency, to get a hunk of meat (without cruising Santa Monica Blvd. near Robertson, heh heh). We went to the movies a few weeks ago and I didn't have time to eat before we went, so I had a hotdog, mustard, no bun, when we were there. 7-Eleven sells hot dogs, too.

But, you have to be careful in what you eat -- that it doesn't have crap oil in it (soybean) and/or carbs. There are hidden carbs in many things. Eades book, The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle, has the diet/recipe stuff Taubes' does not, although I don't favor of the use of Stevia and the carbs they eat. But, I do respect Eades and think this book is good especially for people who aren't willing to go as far as I have with low/no carbing it.

And really, you probably have to be prepared for some weeks of carb withdrawal if you're kind of "addicted" or if you're addicted. But, they pass and if you eat enough fat and protein, you just don't crave juice or sodas or other sugary stuff anymore. At least, that's how it worked for me. Kind of amazing.

see, when i was in spain,a long time ago and seemingly in a galaxy far far away, i spent a week with a host family. now you can perhaps guess how long ago, but anyway. my host "sister" took me to a bar every night, not to drink but to hang out with her friends, where each of them - like 10 people - smoked a pack and a half in each sitting. i swear i'm not exaggerating. i can't sit with that much smoke, it makes me really sick, so i would go across the street to get ice cream as my excuse to get away. two or three times. every night. and i never ever once got sick of it.
now i don't eat ice cream that frequently anymore or i wouldn't fit through my front door. but a week and a half? can't do it. fully respect you for being able to and i really do believe you that the cravings pass. but i don't think i will ever get over ice cream. at least twice a week. i can't have it in the house, because if it's in the house i'll eat it - the only thing that stops me is i generally don't want to go out to get it. i do, however, try to limit my pasta and other big carbs.....
besides, i couldn't do that diet, i'm allergic to eggs - which sucks, because i like them -but if i eat just one i wish i was dead (obviously, unless they're mixed in a casserole or cake or, well, ice cream - which seriously limits what i could eat on even that diet....

"I gave the Taubes diet one week. F-minus. "

A week isn't enough to judge anything. I don't know what you ate, or even if you followed it properly, but a week doesn't seem to be enough. When I first came to Japan almost 30 years ago, I almost went nuts from sugar withdrawal. I couldn't go home again (I'd married and moved over here) so I had to stick it out. After a couple of weeks I stopped craving sugar as much, and now I can't eat most of what's offered in an American bakery, it's too sweet! Sometimes it is just a matter of sticking it out. I wouldn't advise you to keep on a diet that would make you miserable, but it might be worth continuing more than a week to see if you can get past the lethargy that comes with sugar/carb withdrawal.

I was put on a low-fat diet in 2000 or 2001 (memory's a bit hazy) at the gym. I had a few pounds to lose, and it was the current fad. 30 grams or less of fat a day. The idea was to burn body fat instead of the fat you ate. Fat was the big bad guy. Meat's bad, cheese is bad, it was a challenge to eat every day, calculating 30 grams of fat, but I did it for almost a year.

Well, yes, I lost weight, but I lost muscle and I lost bone as well. I lost 30% of my bone density in that year! Because I exercise a lot I was already at 130% bone density (compared to the same age group)...what if I'd had less bone density to start with? My cholesterol went up too. If you don't eat it, your body makes it, I guess. I still feel it was a huge mistake on my part to go on a diet like that. It's unnatural. The bone loss scared me the most, that was unexpected.

We're not carnivores? Early man ate what?? Stone age sites are always full of animal bones.I don't see that denying the way the species evolved has much purpose. We have tearing teeth and grinding teeth, we are omnivores...not purely carnivores,true, but our history does not show humans ever eating only vegetables.

What did I eat? For breakfast, eggs (which do have carbs, by the way, although less than one gram each), bacon which has no carbs. Lunch was a bacon-wrapped sirloin, no carbs, dinner was two cheap fatty hamburger patties, also no carbs.

And as I said, I never felt worse. For snacks I carried some beef jerky with me, although I couldn't find one with no carbs at all. I settled for one with 2 grams per serving. It was also a very fatty jerky, to allow me to slow the absorption.

As I said, I have never felt more sluggish in my life.

Moreover, I find myself not so much craving carbs uncontrollably (since I've never had a weight problem except for about eleven years ago, when I was in a car accident and had to stay home for a few days), but just missing things that I used to enjoy. My favorite snack was apple slices dipped in Smart Balance peanut butter. Anyone who tells me that's bad for me has to be high on crack!

By the way, for those who insist we have the teeth of omnivores, you're wrong. Plain and simple. This is not open to opinion; it's simple fact. Some have tried to explain that we have canines. Yes, all four of them. Go show them to a true omnivore, such as a bear, a raccoon, or a dog, and he's sure to be impressed with your fearsome fangs.

Ooooh, you have four canines...you dominating predator, you!

Newsflash, guys. Deer have canines. Guess what they are, diet-wise? That's right. They're herbivores. Human beings have 32 teeth, only four of which are canines. What does that suggest to you? Incisors and molars are designed to break off and grind up plant matter. At best, it would suggest that our meat intake is intended to be minimal.

To say nothing of the fact that there are certain nutrients that you cannot get from meat, such as vitamin C. So, attempting to subsist on a diet of pure meat is a sure-fire recipe for scurvy, together with the vulnerabilities to your immune system that a diet lacking in vitamin c is sure to bring on.

The teeth argument does nothing to support your hypothesis that we're intended to be omnivores (and in light of the facts presented, you should feel well and truly ridiculous for suggesting such a thing). Zebras have a vicious bite and could maul a human being to death with its teeth, but are strict vegetarians. As distinct from an all meat diet, an all-vegetable diet lacks NOTHING you need in the way of nutrition, save perhaps B-12, but that came from the soil of root vegetables. And that's simple fact.

How long did you have to wait before the cravings passed?

I'll try to give it another week. And from now on, I'm going to start my day with a tall glass of bacon grease mixed with melted butter! Nummy-nummy!

Taube's science sounds accurate, and I have no doubt that this is a great diet if you can follow it. But common sense says that there's no one diet that's going to work for everyone. If you look at say, "People Magazine's Top 10 Bodies of 2009," it's not as though everyone eats and exercises the same way. There are people who swear by veganism, raw food diets, macrobiotic diets...there's a lot of ways out there to look hot and feel good. It makes much more sense to listen to your body rather than fight against it.

Personally, I'm a vegetarian (I do eat seafood) and I'm mildly lactose intolerant, so there's no way I could eat like you do, Amy. Moreover, the idea of butter on everything, food swimming in bacon grease, oily burgers is REVOLTING to me. And where is the fruit?? I love fresh produce and would never, ever give that up. Nope, Taubes is not for me.

But I DO strive to eat a low-carb, high-protein, moderately high-fat diet. I get fat from salmon, olive oil, walnuts, avocados, natural peanut butter, hummus, and some cheese (thinking of cutting out cheese though). As much as I can, I avoid sugar, white flour, processed foods, and anything with a lot of weird ingredients that I can't pronounce.

And for the record, I've never had bowel problems or ever really thought about it (I guess you don't think about it if it's not a problem). And I know people who have professed to have more energy after switching to a vegetarian diet. Again, the science is always changing, and I think it's silly to force yourself to eat in a way that leaves you feeling tired and sluggish just because a book tells you to.

For various reasons, this discussion is reminding me of The 10,000-Year Explosion, which I recently read. No idea how sound the science is, but the thesis -- that the advent of civilization has accelerated, not decelerated, human evolution -- is interesting. Amy, I don't know if you'd like everything in the book, but I bet you'd find it interesting, especially the discussions about Ashkenazi Jews and how the growth of lactose tolerance helped to ensure human survival post-agriculture.

On a totally different note, if you're interested in trying the low-carb thing and are trying to find a replacement for your breakfast cereal, try peanut butter. Real peanut butter -- i.e. the stuff that's just peanuts and possibly salt that you have to keep refrigerated so that the oil won't separate out. A few spoonfuls of that should leave you satiated and energetic without taking any real preparation time.

patrick your tooth argument is ridiculous. our teeth were designed for eating meat and vegetables, similar to our relatives the apes, who, by the way, have huge canines. check out a gorilla sometime. WE HAVE BIGGER BRAINS. WE USED TOOLS. this is what differentiated us in the first place. therefore, we didn't need the huge canines which are used not so much for tearing the meat but for strangling the prey, or, for that matter, bodies designed to chase them, because we can throw the spear. add that to the animal bones primarily found in caveman graves - and the fact that they didn't farm much, or particularly care what someone said about their cholesterol levels - they ate meat. lots of it. they used berries etc. mostly for seasoning their meat because they would never have been able to GATHER enough to feed their tribes. however, one mammoth (hunted with TOOLS) would feed the whole cave for a winter, plus providing the materials for warmth and TOOLS. ok. i'm done.

Actually Patrick, it's all of my biology teachers from high school to college who should feel ridiculous....

Whatever, you wish the tooth argument was ridiculous. Oooh, you carry the spear. Does a spear somehow give you the digestive tract of a carnivore, complete with about twenty times the acidity of our own?

Amy, what does Taubes say about using dietetic sweeteners, such as Splenda, Nutrasweet or saccharine?

Patrick, your deer source says that deer have teeth only in the front, on the lower jaw. If that's a typical herbivore jaw/tooth configuration, it only shows that we're built to eat more of a variety. Animals with 20 times the acidity are animals that eat infrequently when they can kill something, then gorging, eating kilos of meat at a time. They also eat the viscera, cartilage, everything but the squeak, of course they need more stomach acid than someone eating a file mignon and a salad...

Are you one of those non-violence revisionists who are now rewriting human history, filling the internet with articles about how we were historically herbivores, in order to somehow deny mankind's past of killing for sustenance? Oooh, we were kind to all the animals anyone can tell that we only ate plants, because, like, killing animals is just so MEAN, we could never have done that *puke*.....

Ignore the cave paintings of Lascaux, ignore pre-historic digs full of charred animal bones, clear evidence of human meat eating.

patrick it is ridiculous. we cannot get b12 from anything but meat, we cannot absorb iron well from anything but meat, so therefore would have no blood if we didn't eat it. our molars aren't even the same as most herbivores, we cannot digest cellulose AT ALL (or fiber, for that matter), and just for the fun of it, check out a chimp's grin sometime. i don't know when our jaw started to not have the huge canines but it probably had something to do with when we started walking upright and using tools. it's been a few thousand years since then. and carnivores don't eat bone either, as you suggest. they eat bone MARROW, which is gelatinous, generally. no one is saying we're supposed to be complete herbivores or complete carnivores, as you seem to insist. but the idea that we weren't supposed to eat meat because of a "long digestive tract" - nowhere near the length of an herbivore, by the way - is stupid. check out the fossil record. check out actual science. just because your week-long, which is not long enough to test anything, trial failed doesn't mean the science is bad. it means you have no patience and no understanding of your own digestive system, which produces enzymes based on what it is used to receiving. it would take more than a week just for THAT effect to fade. it's been said that it takes 3 weeks to stop feeling like crap. any "trial" less than that is not even valid, and to derive stupid, not-true science in order to support your failure - well, not cool.

Numerous commenters here have tried going carb-free and dropped the pounds like they were nothing.

I replaced one meal per day (lunch) with a virtually no-carb meal. Generally I eat bacon and eggs for breakfast, I was eating a sub-sandwich for lunch, and fajitas and hot wings for dinner. I replaced my sub-sandwich lunch with scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese and butter. Not only did my colon work much better (MUCH BETTER), I lost 10 LBS last week! And I wasn't hungry, wasn't crabby, and didn't really reduce my calories. I will be back down into my size 2s in no time! (I'm in a size 4 now).

Often we forget that many low carb items have fewer calories per serving.

A donut (single, un-frosted) is 185 calories:

http://www.calorie-counter.net/calories-in-a-donut.htm

An egg is 74 calories:

http://www.thecaloriecounter.com/Foods/100/1123/4/Food.aspx

So, you would have to eat 5 eggs to equal the calories in two donuts. Often people feel lethargic when switching to low carb because they don't eat enough.

-Julie

Crella, no one said, least of all me, that we're intended to be exclusive herbivores (or carnivores, for that matter). I'm saying that the fact that we have long digestive tracts, 7 times the number of teeth dedicated to eating plant matter than those teeth that could even be remotely suggested we're intended to consume meat, plus the fact that our delicate digestions cannot handle the various bone matter, hide, etc. that predators get, should be telling you something about the way we're intended to eat.

Whatever, you're too far gone into la-la land to even address. So, believe what you want, about diets, about me personally, whatever. You're not worth addressing.

Oh, any by the way, for those who think true vegans don't get adequate nutrition, I have terrible news for you.

I think you should go find this man right now and tell him that he's 100% wrong. Since he's in better shape than you, I'm sure he'll listen with rapt attention on what you have to say. HA!

Hey, Amy, I think I found a good article on what I wanted to know about artificial sweeteners. It's a long article, but this is the point I wanted to bring up. From the article:

And so our brains have learned over time to equate the taste of “sweet” with a rapid infusion of energy and pleasure — a good thing when food was hard-won and life a battle to survive. Even now when we eat sweet foods, special taste buds trigger enzymes that prime our brain to anticipate this extra boost. With a balanced diet and a healthy metabolism, a calorie–control mechanism kicks in after a few minutes to regulate the desire for more food, including the satiety hormone leptin. But with too much sugar, we eat and eat and can’t get satisfied. (For more on this process, see our article on insulin resistance.)

While I'm no scientist, this seems to suggest that the insulin is triggered to be released, at least partially, when sweet enters the mouth. Which would indeed suggest that artificial sweeteners can trigger an insulin release when, in fact, none is needed.

I couldn't resist:

http://comics.com/candorville/2009-10-10/

-Julie

"You're not worth addressing. "

You don't take disagreement well, do you? You've been sarcastic from the get-go. Show me anything in my post that's 'la-la land', be my guest. The part about how 'killing animals is so wrong, we were certainly herbivores' is taken directly from vegan sites' pages, it's a repeating them, go take a stroll through a few of them and see how they are insisting that man never ate meat, or that eating meat is murder and we must stop being murderers. THAT is la-la land.

"plus the fact that our delicate digestions cannot handle the various bone matter, hide, etc. "

To which I replied that that's probably why carnivores have 20 times the stomach acid we do (which I see bandied about on vegan forums as fact, but I've not seen it backed up by anything scientific).

You must be charming in person.

Douchebags like Patrick are why I find so many vegetarian's insufferable.

Our stomach's produce hydrochloric acid...a substance the body produces to digest animal protein. All omnivorous and carnivorous mammals in nature produce hydrochloric acid in their bellies. Therefore, to say we were not designed to eat meat is nothing more than pure delusion.

For those of you that are not close minded fools, there was a very insigthful, detailed book written by a 20 year vegan named Lierre Kieth called Vegetarian Myths.

Crella, the portion of my post that you're taking umbrage at was not directed at you. It was directed to Whatever. (That's why the paragraph begins with "Whatever." I wasn't saying, "Oh, whatever...!" I was directing it to Whatever.) Only the first paragraph is directed at you.

And I must point out, I never said that we're herbivores, and Dave from Hawaii, I never said I was a vegetarian, either.

I said we were mostly herbivores, like our nearest relatives, the bonobos. Even they consume meat.

I also never said killing animals was wrong. I wear leather shoes and belts.

As for my sarcastic reply to Whatever (not you), this is the very reason. I am so sick of the hyperdefensiveness that comes up every single time Amy brings up this topic. All I say is that we're not intended to eat that way, and I'm buried under an avalanche of strawmen.

For instance, 'killing animals is so wrong, we were certainly herbivores'. Can you show me where I said killing animals is wrong? Can you show me where I said we were herbivores? You can't because I didn't.

Can you please, please, PLEASE, if you're going to discuss an issue with me, would you mind terribly if you attacked arguments that I actually made?

No one is going to convince me otherwise. If a diet is allowing you to lose weight while having all the activity of a garden slug, something's wrong. You're eating too much of something and not enough of something else. We're intended to be active. If people feel the need to diet while their only exercise is shoveling food into their face, and they complain about getting fat, all I can say is, "Duuuuuh...That's how it's supposed to work." And the fact that people who are following this virtually all-meat plan and no fruit allowed are underscoring this point by all the supplements they're talking about. Why do you need an external source for magnesium? Why for Vitamin C? Meat doesn't have it, and the only way you'll get it from any vegetable is to eat it raw, as Vitamin C can't survive the cooking process. So, that pretty much leaves you at fruit.

Obviously, we're intended to eat fruit.

(Now watch while some imbecile insists that I'm saying we're supposed to eat all fruit and nothing but fruit.)

Wrong Patrick. There are plenty of examples of native peoples such as the Inuit who subsist almost entirely off of animal meat and fat, and they did not suffer from Vitamin C deficiency.

Speaking of straw men, your whole "all meat and no fruit" is certainly a big one.

patrick you're an idiot. carnivores do not eat hide and bone matter, that's just stupid. like your entire argument. i must be really bored. and before you start blabbing about your garden slug activity level, again, 1 week is not a valid trial, it's just laziness and inability to commit. which doesn't surprise me.

Dave from Hawaii, regarding the Inuit diet, you are fabulously incorrect. And looking up the Inuit Diet wasn't exactly a daunting challenge. You have Google, so use it. Their diet also includes berries and fireweed, both of which are good sources of Vitamin C.

Whatever, you are a moron, plain and simple. Many predators, such as sharks, are not picky eaters. They eat anything and everything, including bone and hide. Dolphins, which despite their earned reputation as benevolent creatures, are also predators and have been found with bone matter in their digestive tracts. Incidental bone matter and hide is consumed by ALL predators. They are able to cope with this. We cannot.

And your willingness to assign laziness to me indicates to me, too clearly, you are not worth discussing anything with. You are totally unable to cope with disagreement and are willing to assign the worst of motives to anyone who DARES suggest you're wrong.

First of all, it is pure insanity that something like a diet should consign anyone to feeling like crap for three weeks. Have you lost your mind entirely? Food is supposed to be good for you. (And I cannot believe you actually need this explained to you.) I was able to give this diet a week's worth because I took a week off from work. I knew after about three days in a near-torpor, I could not resume my massage therapy eating like this. I could not go back to giving around 5 hours of massage per day at the energy levels I was experiencing.

"Snort, snort, self-righteous snub, yer jes lazy!" Ah, no. It's because I'm not lazy that I can't eat this way. I can't continue to do my best work as a massage therapist, continue my workouts, my biking, etc. when I wake up in the morning with barely the energy of a three-toed sloth.

Again, you are not worth discussing anything with. Your "facts" are "out there." You have visceral hatred of people who don't agree with you. You cannot discuss differences of opinion, or even argue them. You lack the maturity to see disagreement as anything but a personal attack and you can't even handle personal attacks like an adult.

This is the last time I will dignify anything you have to say with a response. Surprise me. Learn something from this. Like how to disagree without being disagreeable.

"Crella, the portion of my post that you're taking umbrage at was not directed at you."

I see, it read as 'whatever, you...' meaning me. I'm sorry.

I never said you said that, I asked you 'Are you one of those?'while bringing up what I found when I googled 'human teeth and diet'. That was an amalgamation of what I read on several sites. I did not say you said it, I clearly asked you 'Are you one of those...' Really, try it if you have some time on your hands...see what comes up.

I see in your post further down you are calling someone a moron. It doesn't help.

Crella, that was an understandable mistake, now that I look at it, and the fault is mine for not being clearer.

And the person I called a moron referred to me as an "idiot," called me "lazy" and said that I had an inability to commit. I don't consider that helpful either.

And if I'm on a short fuse, it's because I dread this topic. The last time I weighed in on this, I was inundated with arguments aimed at me over things I never said.

Some frilly coxcomb insisted that he found a site that smashed all my arguments and that it showed that my conclusions about bonobos were wrong. All I found out from that site about bonobos was a devastating argument against the assertion that bonobos were frugarians. Had I actually said that bonobos were frugarians, I would have been well and truly humbled. Unfortunately, I didn't say that bonobos were frugarians (although, they are, in fact, about seventy percent frugarian).

He also sneered that cooking meat makes it easier to digest. Not harder. Easier. Unfortunately, I didn't say that cooking meat makes it harder to digest. What I said was that cooking fuses the amino acids, making the protein harder to absorb.

I said nothing about the difficulty of pushing meat through the digestive tract, I was talking about how fusing amino acids makes it more difficult for peptides to break it down.

Every time this topic comes up, I am forever saying, "I didn't say this...I didn't say that...I didn't say this...I didn't say that..."

Misquoting happens, but when the very words are directly above you for you to read, you're kind of without an excuse.

Great link, Amy...notice Patrick just ignored it. Pretentious dumbass.

Here's an interesting one for people interested further in why native populations high fat/high meat diets were very nutritious, and why those peoples thrived...until they adapted Western diets high in grains, sugars and other processed garbage that is responsible for so much ill health: Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Dr. Weston A. Price

Dave in Hawaii, would you like someone to post a link on anger management for you? I didn't skip Amy's link. At the time I replied, the computer I was using did not access that particular site. I could have probably found what the computer was missing, but since it wasn't my computer to mess with, I thought I'd wait until I got home.

I already posted a link on the Inuit diet. You'll see it in my post. Those hyperlinked words "Inuit Diet."

From Amy's link: Stefansson argued that the native peoples of the arctic got their vitamin C from meat that was raw or minimally cooked--cooking, it seems, destroys the vitamin.

So, if you're up for the raw meat thing, be my guest. I'll visit you in the hospital...unless you're in the morgue.

Since our western civilization is kind of skittish about raw meat (considering the contaminants that will thrive in raw meat), your recourse is in supplements or fruits and vegetables raw, since Amy's link out confirms what I said earlier: Vitamin C does not survive cooking.

Patrick, Dave from Hawaii, Amy, crella, and whatever, you might find some common ground in "Biochemical Individuality" by Roger J. Williams, PhD. The author explains how wide variation in biochemical and physiological makeup determines what sort of food is appropriate for any given individual. You can find corroborating information in "Nutrition and your Mind" by George Watson, PhD. Although both of these books were published more than three decades ago, keep in mind that truth does not vary with time.

Arguments as to what sort of diets everyone ought to consume should focus on adequacy and appropriateness, not speculation based on assumptions about the food processing suitability of various aspects of the digestive system. To be optimally healthy, each of us must obtain nourishment in a configuration that allows the body (and it's gut microbiota) to extract sufficient materials for body building, tissue repair, detoxification, and defense against pathogens. It makes no difference whether the materials (nutrients) are derived exclusively from plant or animal sources or some combination of both so long as the body is able to process them without harm to the metabolism. Remember, one man's meat...

Thoughtfully put together article! I only wish I had noticed it a few months ago, it would have made my day.
K-Cups