How long can you live w/o veggies?

I make a "tuna salad" only it has mackerel, sauerkraut, wild green onions and super hot peppers and greek yogurt.
OK fine nothing like tuna salad, its hot as hell and chunky and crunchy beyond your wildest imagination and these wild onions - you'd end up flossing it out of your teeth for weeks. Its the meal that keeps on eating.

I'm pretty sure nobody needs vegetables to live. the Inuits prove this- they are the healthiest and longest lived peoples on the planet and they eat 100% carnivorously. you can't get any more primal than that

Past tense, Priest. The Inuits of today are a people plagued by all the ills of civilization, including diabetes, alcoholism, heart disease and cancer. Nor were their ancestors noted for their longevity -Stephansson thought their lifespan ran 50-60 years. The longest-lived people today are found where the temperatures do not vary appreciably from hot to cold, where vegetables are available year round, and exercise is a feature of the seniors. Look up Vilcabamba, Ecuador or even Japan, where Japanese women are the title holders for oldest group in the world.

http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/all-meat-diets/

Georgia Ede MD

https://web.archive.org/web/20110411051742/http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/2/28/william-munny-eats-his-vegetables.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20120801004250/http://www.archevore.com/panu-weblog/2011/3/1/polyphenol-hormesis-follow-up.html

“Let me be clear that I have no clue where the exact nadir of the polyphenol j-curve lies. It could be three Mark Sisson big-ass salads a day, or one a week. I have no idea. I just doubt it is either really high or zero. I would say that if you are a meat-and-water zero-carber, to start eating colorful tubers and root veggies with starch in them first. If you are getting a modicum of starch – my back of the envelope is 2K – twice the Kwasniewksi number of 10% of calories – 20%, then maybe add a few green salads a week. Personally, my polyphenol consumption sounds about like yours. I eat green salads and salsas and avocados, tomatoes, sweet and russet potatoes, green beans, etc. I also drink plenty of coffee and cold brewed white and green tea (just for the flavor) and dark chocolate makes the cut as well. I don’t plan to change or add to any of this, and if Stephan is wrong and Peter is right (no plants besides potatoes is best, e.g.) I would not change it anyway.” aldus Kurt Harris (PaNu).

Do you remember the Anderson family?

priest wrote:I'm pretty sure nobody needs vegetables to live.  the Inuits prove this- they are the healthiest and longest lived peoples on the planet and they eat 100% carnivorously.  you can't get any more primal than that

No, they wereen't. Neither longest lived nor zero carb. Even w/o the Western Diet entering their lives. They did not live terribly long, even w/o trauma. And they did eat bits and pieces of vegetable matter, perhaps most notably berries. Granted, a small part of the diet.

There was an interesting series of posts a couple of years ago on Free The Animal. IIRC, it turns out that the sea mammal's skin actually has carbohydrates in it. The skin is a favorite part of the kill, a lot of fat. Who would have guessed that they really weren't "zero carb?"

Nothing is remotely simple when it comes to diet and health. Always confounders.

well, maybe not the longest lived, but by FAR the highest quality of life due to the sheer amount of meat eaten in relation to non-meat items. other factors may have contributed to shorter lives/ traumas, but certainly not lack of vegetables. if not for the meat, they wouldn't have thrived as they did for near as long

They considered fat more important than meat, but ate plenty of both. Their quality of life was typical of a rough environment and close community living.
In fact, the Inuit were no more nor less bound by social norms than many traditional and isolated societies, and their lifespans were shorter than many. What is very interesting is that many suffered sudden deaths, not the lingering disease-ridden states of so many peoples today. IOW, they died with their boots on, not plugged into various machines. Given the choice, most of us today would choose to do the same.

While perusing the web, came across this quote on Dr Mercola's site from Jan 2/18 . He was discussing fasting and intermittent fasting as an aid to longevity.
"It bears mentioning that Longo's fasting mimicking diet is not a water-only fast. The fasting mimicking diet involves restricting your calories to 800 to 1,100 calories per day for five days each month, opposed to no-calorie fasting. It was primarily developed to improve compliance, as many find a five-day water-only fast to be too difficult. The low-calorie strategy also helps reduce the likelihood of adverse side effects, while retaining the benefits."
And, of course, one of those benefits was reducing risk factors of diabetes. If you can reduce enough of those risk factors, IMHO, you will escort yourself out of diabetes. Weight loss is the biggie. How that weight loss happens is what we're discussing here.

Having nothing to do with vegetables nor calories, the primary benefit (maybe the only benefit) of fasting is autophagy. Junk amino acids are scavenged from cells to improve cellular health. Any intermittent break of protein consumption triggers the process whereas a fast from fats or vegetables does not.

Emulating the old Inuit or any other ancient diet, expecting to reap the same benefits is vain if you are not aware of your haplotype. Haplotyping is still in its infancy as a study, but we should have a general idea of what part(s) of the world our ancestors' diets evolved.

Unless your ancestors' ancient home was in a dark, cold and high latitude, you should not expect to thrive on a diet solely of meat and fat. Fat adaption as we primals view it does not provide all the benefits as Inuit evolutionary adaption provided. Conversely, modern Inuit are adopting the diets of lower latitude peoples with great difficulty for the same reason, a mismatch of haplotype and diet.

John Caton....... haplotype.......

Thanks for that word mention. Yet a new thing I can research and read about!

Although they didn't call it haplotype, some of the earlier health food proponents like John Tobe advocated eating only local foods in season. This was years ago,and instinctively,he understood that the foods that you grew up on in ancestral areas was the best foods for you.
As for the Inuit, they are getting sick on the same foods that made us sick. The White Man's Diet (Western Diet) has killed hundreds of thousands over the last 4 centuries., but the pace accelerated the last 100 years.

many peoples have been displaced from their ancestral areas and are forced to eat veggies that are foreign to their haplotypes. if they would just eat meat and fat only, which fits all haplotypes, they wouldn't run into the insidious diseases and malnutrition that veggies cause

Wow! Are you sure this is Priest, the vegan proponent , talking???  Heheh. Meat and fat may be universal to all haplotypes, but as many people point out, man cannot live on blubber alone. (Even the Inuit). I was entranced by the Meatarian philosophy a few weeks ago, but my body protested strongly. Really! I thought I should be able to handle it, but Boss Body decreed otherwise. So I'm back to a more primal lifestyle, and reluctantly have several veggies in my main meal. But at least I'm not afraid of any meals that emphasize fat and meat over salads.

There is an inherent problem saying anything about "vegetables".
They run the entire spectrum of great to terrible, regardless of your preferred WOE.
Even if you're calorie restricting - olives, avocadoes, coconuts and for that matter all nuts will kill that in a hurry.
If you're doing low carb - obviously corn, rice, wheat, sugar cane etc etc will ruin that.
Veggies have to be spoken of on a case by case basis.

Meat OTOH is a lot less wide ranging in the context of a Low carb diet.
Low calorie diet - maybe it can span a wider range.

Interesting...I had my DNA analyzed a while ago...I am 99.98% Northern European. Yes, it is a scientific fact - you can't get any whiter than I am. Possibly explains why I feel my best with a fair amount of meat in my diet, and can't digest legumes. Lentils....shiver....

Or possibly some unwise food choices in times past allowed breaks in your intestinal lining that made any kind of lectins totally off limits w/o proper preparation. Like you, Walrus, I am from Northern European ancestry for several generations back (my grandparents' word was good enough for me ), and there are a lot of immune dysfunctions in my immediate family,. Dr Mercola ran an article that allowed for certain lectins to benefit the body, providing certain caveats were followed. Pressure cooking (did I mention I love my Instant Pot?) neutralizes most lectins, except from wheat and other grass family members. Slow cookers and raw did not. Oh darn, guess I'll pass on sous vide cooking.
And bread. But I can handle lentils, split pea soup, and certain whiter beans. Black beans, kidney beans and other dark beans are problematic.

I am of Aryan descent, and have a few millennia of tropical ancestry, and classically, I am happy eating meat, veg, grains, processed, raw, ancient plants classified by monsatan as weeds and fibrous as the dickens - oh yea my favorite. And the animeals that eat those that happen to find their way onto my plate - double extra favorite.

Srinath, you're a brown Aryan and I'm a white Aryan. I've eaten all those things in the past, including weeds. That includes dock and purslane, lambsquarters and sundry others. Not any more, mostly due to my mobility issues and lack of suitable weeds in my desert area. Nor have I tried rattlesnake, again, due to mobility issues, as I can't leap high enough!

Purslanne - I cant get it to take root in my yard. Apparently its supposed to be impossible to get rid of ... except, not for me. Chicory is another I cant get to grow. But yea cool, I intend to eat those whenever I feel like it. Those are awesome. I live on an alluvial plain that was a sea bed a few millennia ago. These guys are so rich in potassium and iodine I essentially have to watch my consumption amount and mix it with store bought, else I overshoot on potassium and cramp myself.

There is a cultivated purslane that supposedly is better for you even than regular weedy stuff. And  I had lots of chicory growing wild on my old stomping grounds in Ontario, but I rarely ate the spring leaves, as they were my goats' delicacies (Yes, I ate goat meat.)The dried root formed the basis of a coffeelike drink my hubby liked. Never heard of a greens diet that furnished too much potassium and iodine if they were cooked in salted water.

Chicory is a common additive in coffee we used to buy in India. Sadly we looked down upon the people who bought more chicory, it was less $$$ and hence bad for you ... as in, worse than coffee LOL. Now we fine coffee is good for you, and chicory - even better.
Cultivated anything - not my style, cos its more work than just buying off the shelf.

"Wow! Are you sure this is Priest, the vegan proponent , talking???"

EX-vegan proponent, yes! after being duped into believing groupthink veganazi propaganda lies like "cow farts are driving global warming" and "cattle farming is destroying rainforests" and "bacon is a class 1 carcinogen" (the topics are almost limitless), I have come around to the TRUE lifestyle and movement, Paleo and Keto. somewhere along the way I got hoodwinked and started denying basic common sense: if a food tastes good, it MUST be good for you. bacon tastes good. pork chops taste good. kale tastes like shit. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that veggies are the "root" of all evil, but it DOES take a bunch of neo-hippie fascist vegans to make up a bunch of lies about the fake sustainability of vegetable eating to create doubt that we evolved correctly as meat eaters.

I apologize for my past behavior as one of these idiot vegans in trying to detract Grokkers and Primal advocates from real discussions about meat and optimal human and environmental health. thank GOD for this lively, prolific and SPAM-FREE forum! you guys rock!

Priest, please tolerate my skepticism, but your overly zealous post strikes me as not so thinly veiled trolling. Hope you prove me wrong.

priest wrote:"Wow! Are you sure this is Priest, the vegan proponent , talking???"

EX-vegan proponent, yes!  after being duped into believing groupthink veganazi propaganda lies like "cow farts are driving global warming" and "cattle farming is destroying rainforests" and "bacon is a class 1 carcinogen" (the topics are almost limitless), I have come around to the TRUE lifestyle and movement, Paleo and Keto.  somewhere along the way I got hoodwinked and started denying basic common sense:  if a food tastes good, it MUST be good for you.  bacon tastes good.  pork chops taste good.  kale tastes like shit.  it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that veggies are the "root" of all evil, but it DOES take a bunch of neo-hippie fascist vegans to make up a bunch of lies about the fake sustainability of vegetable eating to create doubt that we evolved correctly as meat eaters.

I apologize for my past behavior as one of these idiot vegans in trying to detract Grokkers and Primal advocates from real discussions about meat and optimal human and environmental health.  thank GOD for this lively, prolific and SPAM-FREE forum!  you guys rock!

Going from one extreme to the next and bashing your former 'buddies' is not going to do you any favors... most people can see right through this behaviour and acknowledge it for what it is. Merely quoting for future reference...