dairy and grains - 2 more points of view

asking Rose, specifically, but of course I am interested in everyone's opinions.

what about the Weston A Price people? they believe dairy is great, but only if you are consuming it raw (if I understand it right)

www.westonaprice.org/      they are also really into meat and cod liver oil.


what about Mr. McDougal's plan? there is an OHer who did not have surgery but lost almost 200 pounds on it.  they are into high carb, low fat as I understand it.

www.drmcdougall.com/    

an example of a link I found on his site was to a study called

• March 2006: High Protein Diets Harmful and Unnecessary for Endurance Athletes

 Tried McDougal - didn't lose an ounce.  My body did not respond to that approach (ohhh, I wi**** did - I would so love to be a vegetarian).  

I was a raw vegan, didnt lose weight (and I mean, low sugar raw vegan, so not just mounds of dates, fruits and whatnot, not a whole lot of nuts either - still no change in body composition, weight).  I was a vegetarian (cooked) and didnt lose weight.  With both of those my mood swings lessened, and when I first came back to meat, I could *feel* the extra hormones I was consuming, but none of those were the panacea to weight, or allergies, or the rest of the crap I had going on (with the exception of making my wild mood swings a little less wild).

Everything but the tapeworm and the jaw wiring, I had tried, it seems. 

I know those things are definitely the answer for some folks, but not for me.

My opinion - we are all sooo different!  :} 

what i find interesting is it is suggested that pasturizing milk takes out the enzymes that allow the human body to absorb the calcium from it.. If this is true all the years of drinking milk were doing no good anyway LOL..

I see that they highly suggest eating yogurts which i like to do anyway, and kefir which i have never tried but it is supposed to have great health benefits too..

I always buy plain yogurt that has live cultures and add blueberries or yogurt and for me i add sugar free jello mix to flavour it because i like my yogurt thick.

I have found that most of these extreme diets (I consider anything that cuts out whole food groups to be extreme) to take a bit of science and RUN with it. But, if you go back to the original studies, you find they aren't as dramatic and clear as whomever is touting their way of eating would tell you.

The reason for this, IMO, is that humans evolved during a time where food was scarce. As a result, our digestive systems are highly adaptable. Which means, bottom line, we can eat pretty much anything and do fine on it.

That doesn't mean that some people aren't going to do better on one kind of diet than another but, even then, very few people do *badly* eating certain kinds of food. Naturally, this occurs on a spectrum (just like all human behavior and attributes) so there are some people out there who can eat just about anything and feel great and some people who have to limit themselves to a very narrow range of food to feel great.

But most of us are in the middle and can eat what appeals to us and perform optimally. This is why so many of us can consume dairy even though we lose the enzyme to digest lactose as we age - because our bodies are adaptable and very forgiving.

For myself, I do best on a diet high in protein and fat and lower in carbs. Now, I consume 100-300 g of carbs a day (average around 175-200 g) and some people who are into the more extreme low carb diets would scream at calling that low carb. But that's about 40% of my calories from carbs, not the 50-60% that traditionalist recommend AND I am an endurance athlete -- someone who supposedly needs to eat tons and tons of carbs to have a good performance.

I get about 35% of my calories from fat. And, yes, my cholesterol numbers are terrific. LOL

That leaves about 25% from protein, which not far above the 20% that traditionalist recommend. Yet people just DIE when they hear how many grams of protein I consume a day.

I'm an omnivore, that's all I know for sure.  I think a small amount of people actually do well on one extreme or another but most of us do better with more variety.

too much math, Mac!