Paul Saladino· MD
know fatty acid uh you know uh responsible for our unique human cognition of course dha which is this extraordinary substance extraordinary molecule um it actually um you know we have an omega-3 based cognition and even our closest primate relatives have an omega-6 based cognition you know and so we kind of you know in fact the size of our gut you know is so much smaller than even our closest primate relatives and by the way all the great apes hunted meat and to something they did yeah eat with the exception of herbivorous gorillas which by the way have a brain only about a third of the size that would be expected of a primate their size but a chimp you know which is supposed to be our closest relative they have a gut size about 52 percent of its digestive tract so they have a primarily fermentative base digestive system um with some ability to digest and assimilate meat um but ours is only about 20 and you know it's less only about half of what should be expected for a primate of our size and yet we have a longer small intestine much shorter large intestine and we rely on hydrochloric acid and we need that not just for digesting protein but for establishing the signaling that occurs further south down the pike in our digestive tract we have large gallbladders obviously but that hydrochloric acid is also essential for the ionization and absorption and utilization of minerals in our diets and um you know we are very very unique primate species in that root in that regard uniquely adapted to eating animals we are uniquely adapted to eating animals there's no question for that now you know um you know the question becomes you know so and you know we know from the stable isotopic research happening at the max planck institute of evolutionary anthropology and leaps of germany and all of that that you know our prehistoric ancestors weren't just carnivores they were very high level carnivores in excess even of many of the other carnivorous animals that we co-evolved with does that mean though that we need to consume as much of meat today as they did and is that optimal for us and you know my answer to that is no that we're much better off moderating our protein intake for a variety of reasons and again of necessity we have to have animal source protein we have foundational requirements for this we are evolutionary evolutionarily and genetically adapted to a diet that consists of a variety of animal source foods but in my belief um and you know in you know relative certainly to what i've discovered along the way and i think it's quite a bit of research to corroborate that fat was meant to be of necessity of dominate in in our caloric intake and fat soluble nutrients in our nutritional intake and i think we're better off if we moderate the protein intake to just what we need as long as our digestive process is working well and if it isn't more protein isn't better the way a lot of recommendations uh you know there are a lot of uh people that recommend higher protein as we age because people aren't digesting it as well to me you just end up with more rotting protein in your gut you know the the focus really should be on improving digestion instead of increasing protein so i you know i take a little bit of issue with the carnivore diet at least some renditions of it that suggest you know as much meat as you want more is better it's all great did you did you hear the talk that i gave at ahs no do you know what it was about uh no it was about fat well good for you it was about animal fat and it was about it was about animal fat as the most precious human nutrient so that's what it's funny how serendipitous yeah so that was the topic that was the talk that i gave at the ancestral health symposium and people can listen to that talk that talk is published i think that that talk is on my youtube channel if people want to see it but i talked about many of the same themes that you're talking about the sacredness of fat in cultures throughout the world throughout human history the seeking of fat and you know i think that what's interesting about those stable isotope studies i i don't think that they're saying that humans ate a lot of protein i think what they're good at distinguishing is where we got our protein from right because they're showing us that we got our protein from animals rather than plants and because of the nitrogen and the carbon isotopes and so that i think is is quite unique about it and that that's been the part that i've taken away from them i don't think we know what the macros of our ancestors were because we don't have a sense of where the fat was coming from but because of the way that nitrogen and carbon bioaccumulate as you go up the trophic food chain we can see that our protein was coming from animals rather than plants so for me i've always kind of said hey here is evidence that we were primarily carnivores but i think as you have suggested as mickey vendors suggested and many others have suggested that we were hunting the fattiest animals and who knows what macros we were getting and i think we're still trying to figure out where the protein the fat macro is and i would i would tend to agree with you that over consumption of protein is probably not a great thing the question becomes and we can probably talk about this a little bit how much what's the sweet spot for protein i'd be curious to hear what you think about that sure well i do want to cite a little bit of um so sometimes when you don't have clear data like you say in terms of macros etc we can't extrapolate a little bit from logic when we look at the world that we occupied prior to the end of this last ice age which i say the end we're still in it