I think that's right, reducing refined carbs and processed foods, etc. is a huge start, and bound to result in great improvement. So that's part of it. But animal sources of food have certain beneficial micronutrients that are lacking in plant food, and that's what would worry me most, aside from the fact that grains and legumes (and even seeds and nuts in high quantities) have high levels of antinutrients (e.g., phytic acid) and are not the best sources for the nutrients that they do offer (veggies being much better). But if people are seeing improvement and better health from such diets, then by all means. The human body and nutrition itself are quite complex, and there's much we don't know.

And thanks so much for sending the paper.

Ken, thanks for this. When growing up, in my teens, I had a chance for a while to work with animals, lambs and chicken, and there was something primal about slaughtering the animal with your own hands and at times even barbecuing it up right there, knowing what it had eaten and how it had lived. Our animals would roam and graze freely, and ate what they were meant to eat, so no GMO corn or soy, no antibiotics in their feed, and all that junk. It was a small family run operation. We also used to eat mountain greens in the same area, saute them, even though they probably looked like weeds to most people.

I would never recommend a diet with no veggies and carbs, that would be impossible but also terrible health wise. My diet is very high in a diversity of veggies, just low in carbs. In fact, eat meal consists of larger portions of veggies than anything else. Just as we've always hunted, we've always foraged. We are definitely opportunistic and omnivorous creatures.

Patrick,

Cutting out processed foods and sugar is great, essential in fact. I agree. But I think more can be done. You needn't do anything, but I for one prefer to cut out all sources of toxins from my diet, or as many as I can. For example, I prefer to eat animals that haven't been fed GMO corn and soy when they're meant to eat grass, which is why the fatty acid makeup of these two sets of animals are radically different. I prefer to eat quality fats rather than seed or grain oils that are GMO and poor in quality fatty acids. Such things are important to health.

Again, you needn't do anything, but nutrition is quite complex, as I'm learning more and more each day. And physicians are not nutritionists and more often than not know very little about nutrition. The Atkins diet does not aim for health but for weight loss, and the company itself sells processed foods of its own. Their principle is just to keep down the carbs and eat more fat to get in ketosis. Healthy eating is more complex than that. But if it works for you, then that's what matters most.

There are people on the Mediterranean diet who live to ripe old ages and are quite healthy. Genetics, the state of one's body and so much else matters. The Inuit eat diets that are almost entirely fat and very low in veggies and seem to do just fine, in some respects healthier than us, even though I think most of us would not do too well on those diets. So it gets very complex very fast. My principle is just to limit the toxins and maximize natural and nutrient dense sources of nutrition, that's basically it. So far so good. Perhaps in the future I'll have to change things around again. I don't know.