GRAPH: Study confirms 96% Vegetarian diet being used by Tarahumara super-athletes
Source: Confirmed peer-reviewed scientific study: "Food and Nutrient Intakes of the Tarahumara Indians of Mexico" Maria T. Cerqueira, M.S. R.D. Martha McMurry Fry, M.S. R.D. and William E. Connor, M.D. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 32, April pp. 905-915, 79 .
The Tarahumara tribe of native aboriginal indians live in Copper Canyon, Mexico, in south central America. Actual scientific analysis data revealed that the Tarahumara are eating a diet which is 94% Vegan, 96% Vegetarian, and breaking some of the greatest known human endurance records. Whereas a Marathon is a tough endurance race for anyone, the Tarahumara, using their formula for a plant-based diet, can run distances of over 200-miles, with no problem.
This is not simply 1 individual that does this, virtually all of them do it. That includes the men, and the women, and the young, and the old. They all eat a mainly plant-based diet based on huge amounts of Grain. They eat carbs, and are thin. They eat a diet of a whopping 75+% carbohydrates and have absolutely no obesity or weight problems. In fact their health is great and they can run unheard of distances like no other person son earth. In one instance they clocked a run of a distance of over 435 miles. In 48 hours. This goes beyond ultra-marathons. This is like running 16 full-length Marathons in 2 days. All on the successful formula of a plant-based diet packed with grains and vegetables and with practically no meat whatsoever. Eating less fat, more carbs, and less protein has resulted in some of the most physically-fit athletes in the world.
Their diet is composed primarily of beans and corn, with hot chile peppers, squashes, and plenty of greens. The primarily vegetarian tribe has occupied their current area for over 2,000 years. And they continue to practice their native aboriginal customs. "The Tarahumaras are renowned for extraordinary physical fitness and endurance as long-distance runners." Incidence of deaths from cardiac and circulatory complications are virtually unknown. They have virtually no high blood pressure and consume loads of grains and cereal crops such as corn and wheat and almost no animal products. Cholesterol levels were very low, at 125mg/dl on average. Plants contain No cholesterol. All the world's cholesterol is coming from animal products. So virtually all dietary cholesterol is coming from the ingestion of animal products such as meat. Ancel Keys' Lipid Hypothesis and Diet-Heart Study is confirmed, utilizing the data analysis in this subject population. "Total plasma cholesterol correlated positively with dietary cholesterol intake, the first time in man such a correlation has been found."
This once again stands as proof that dietary cholesterol does indeed influence blood cholesterol and also stands as proof of Ancel Keys's 7 countries study and the Lipid Hypothesis. (Note: Please be aware of some now debunked studies that attempted to claim that dietary cholesterol did not affect plasma cholesterol. The results work analogously to a cup. If you have a cup that is already full of water and measure the amount of water, it will already be virtually at the top brim. Then if you conduct an experiment wherein you add more water to the already filled cup, the level of water in the cup is still going to be the same, because the excess is flowing off. That is what is happening in a lot of these defunct cholesterol studies trying to claim that eating cholesterol doesn't raise your cholsterol. They were testing subjects whose blood was already fairly saturated with cholesterol, and then claiming that eating even more cholesterol didn't affect it much. Some of these confusionist studies were in fact funded by the egg industry and not surprisingly paid to have studies conducted that showed that eggs were safe and healthy to eat. However they were just pouring more cholesterol into subjects whose blood was already loaded with cholesterol. Like pouring more water into a cup that is already full to the brim and then using conflation to purport that pouring any water even in aa fairly empty cup has absolutely no effect on raising the water level. These studies claiming that ingesting dietary cholesterol has no effect on your cholesterol were determined to be erroneous and found to be based on pseudoscience.
Also note that there is a now-debunked Professor who goes by the name of Daniel Lieberman who at one time purported that these tribes were running around like Neanderthals or primitive hunter-gatherers and were running after deer and animals all over the place to exhaust them and then waiting for them to collapse. He then claimed that the proper way to run was barefoot running and to run on your tip toes instead of a heel strike. He then went on to claim animals can't sweat (yes they can), they have to pant (no they don't), and since they can't gallop and pant at the same time they just fall over and then the Tarahumara would supposedly eat them. He then labeled this as 'persistence hunting' and claimed that the Tarahumara were doing this to this day. If you are dubiously raising an eyebrow like Mr. Spock right now you are not alone. This man and many of his contrivances have been thoroughly debunked. Dr. Dan Lieberman, who also went around calling himself "the barefoot professonr" is now regarded as disreputable. First of all, Dr. Dan Lieberman never visited the Tarahumara. Next, it is surmised that he used what is called conflation. What he did was potentially confuse one tribe, with another one, on a completely seeparate continent. The Tarahumara don't even eat a large volume of meat. He potentially got the Tarahumara, who live in Mexico, confused with the Maasai tribe, who live in Africa. This is an entirely different continent. The Maasai ingest large volumes of meat and can't run 435 miles and studies found that their arteries were in about the same condition as an American old man. The Maasai have one of the shortest life-expectancies on earth. Why would the Tarahumara devote huge amounts of energy, designing an entire culture revolving around this long-distance running...in order to chase an animal for 200 miles, exhaust it in order to hunt it and eat it, and they are primarily vegetarian? As you can see, it didn't make much sense.
In addition to this, the expenditures and usage of the volume of calories spent in these 200 to 400 mile runs, is upwards of 45,000 calories. You did not read that incorrectly. That is not 40thousand calories, that is forty-five-thousand calories. Let's think of this in terms of primal ancient hunter-gatherer survival. For what purpose would it be, to use up 45,000 calories, in order to chase down, to exhaustion, an animal, which then would reward the user with meat which would return fewer calories than that spent, not be able to eat along the way because the meat hasn't been caught yet so no meal, and you can't stop otherwise the animal would also have time to rest and then just get away, then be able to eat at most 5lbs of it, which would not provide enough calories to replenish those that were lost, and since meat has no carbs, the runner would then from said meat have no carbs or muscle glycogen to get back. Remember, he has to run 200 miles back home to the village as well. But wait, if he ran 200 miles trying to exhaust some animal, then could gobble down only 5 lbs of it at most on site (as a vegetarian mind you), if the antelope or animal weighs 115 pounds, supposedly worth going 200 miles for it, now that runner would have to carry 100 pounds of meat on his back, yet another 200 miles back to the village. Spoiling and decomposing and rotting in the hot sun. And when he got this 100 pounds of luke-warm beginning-to-smell meat back to the village, now most of the people are primarily vegetarians, so not so interested in eating it. All this for expending 45-thousand calories, 1 way. And perhaps even double or triple that with the immense effort of carrying 100 pounds on your back. (Try it. Pick up a 100 lb gym plate and run 200 miles with it. See how that comes out. Remember, you have to do it within 4 hours or the 'meat' on your back will be infested with bacteria and will kill your wife, children, and family, due to botulism, ecoli, or decomposition). How are Dr. Dan Lieberman's theories working out so far?
In addition to this, he claims humans only sweat, and animals pant. And they can't gallop and pant at the same time so animals fall over dead when you chase them. Well, dogs pant. Try and chase your dog. See who exhausts who. Realize that it can even rest and become rested, while you are still trying to catch up, and by the time you get to it, it's all rested and ready to go again. But next, guess what. Animals pant? Horses don't. Guess what. Horses sweat. Horses sweat through the skin like humans. They don't pant. They are an animal. And horses can also run a marathon. In fact, as one might recall, people ride horses. WHy? Because for being born to run, humans get tired so easily that they had to start using horses and ride on them. They'll get tired, no doubt, but once again, a horse can get miles ahead of a human before you know it, and by the time the human catches up, just like the dog, the horse is somewhat rested again. It may have even been relaxing by the side of a watering hole under the shade of a tree for a time, while you were still running in the hot sun, and guess what, if you want to catch that horse you can't stop for water, because once you spook it, it's going to take off again. As you can see, this makes no sense. Mathematically. Nutritionally. Calorically. Biologically. Gastronomically. The man who sugtgested that the Tarahumara ran 435 miles to hunt animals by wxhausting them until the fell over by persistence hunting, while being primarily vegetarian, and animals fall over because animals cant sweat, yet a horse indeed sweats, is making claims not based on anything rational.
Not only that, but Dr. Daniel Lieberman's papers and study on barefoot running were also debunked and found potentially false. He went around and published papers asserting that native runners use toe strikes, not heel strikes. Not only that, but that we are *genetically* evolved to do this. Now, if we are *genetically* evolved to do this, the it's not going to be just 'occasionally', it should be virtually automatic. That should be the natural gait that virtually everyone effortlessly falls into. It's not. But not before he spawned a whole burgeoning new industry of toe-shoes and vibram 5-fingers minimus footwear which you can now spend $125.00 buying simply in order to make it like you are running barefoot. Apparently still buying a $125 dollar shoe, with little toes in it, that makes it "as if" you are running barefoot, is better than: running barefoot. With the 2 growths that you already have that are supposedly precisely genetically designed for this purpose. In any case, even his toe-strike, heel-strike work was found dubious:
Likewise, be aware that there are multiple incorrect articles erroneously attempting to dispell the Seven Countries Study conducted by cholesterol researcher Ancel Keys. The scam articles usually include claims that countries were purposely left out of the 6-countries study, or 22 countries study. If you see one of these, please be aware that they were already debunked many years go. To give you an idea, 1 of these so-called articles trying to claim Ancel Keys somehow lied was found traced to a 19 year old girl named Denise Minger, with no Medical Degree, and was merely a school student majoring in English. Yet another one of these articles incorrectly purporting to debunk Ancel Keys was traced to Sally Fallon Morell, another person with no scientific degree and no published papers in any peer-reviewed scientific journal who is from a known health fraud front group corporate lobbyist organization called the Weston A. Price Foundation listed on QuackWatch for its dubious health articles, practices, and false beliefs. The articles usually con viewers by first stating that 1 country was omitted from the study, and then erroneously purporting that the researcher did this willfully in order to intentionally fudge his own study results, which is not the case. As usual, a con group will often begin with a kernel of truth, and then pile false information surrounding it. So while 1 country was dropped, it was not due to some conspiracy, but rather it was because the integrity of that country's data was contaminated and unreliable. In this case, it involved census-like figures for deaths or incidences of heart disease for each country. 1 country's results were omitted, but not because it was any plot to sway results, but in fact it was because the health records for that country were found unreliable and contaminated. Think of an example. Let's pretend you are testing how kids at 7 different high-schools do on a 100 point test. At 6 of those schools, the test was given properly and professors were on hand to check and prevent any students cheating, and the scores were sound. However, you learn that at the 7th school, it was a free-for-all. Students were allowed to cheat, talk to eachother, no one was watching, some students were looking up the answers in books, or googling the answers, and after that, teachers that didn't care that much inattentively graded the tests and missed some answers, and generally turned in a set of scores that were contaminated and unreliable, and in fact may have been tainted by cheating. What do you do? Load the scores from that lax school into your otherwise sound results? No. Of course not. It is the responsible researcher, like Ancel Keys, that throws out those heavily contaminated and questionably derived test scores, and uses the remaining 6 schools' data. This is akin to what happened. What these dubious article authors have done, is highlight that 1 country's results were dropped, which is correct, but then construct a conspiracy theory hoax surrounding that and erroneously purport that this was some sort of willful act to bend the results of the study. This is not correct. And all of these bogus sources, such as Robert Lustig, Uffe Ravnskov, James Dinicolantonio, Johnny Bowden, Chowdhury and other such non-reputable sources, sometimes found to be selling diet-books, were revealed to be debunked. This has not stopped some, however, as yet another non-scientific journalist, produced an entire television show called Catalyst, which regurgitated several of these myths and hoaxes again, unaware that virtually all of these "cholesterol myth" claims have been evaluated and found not to be based on science.
The Tarahumaras turned out to be a stunning confirmation of the Diet-Heart and Lipid Hypothesis and confirmation that Ancel Keys was indeed correct. Because the Tarahumara indians were a tribe veritably untouched, they stand as a sample that is uncontaminated. And since the Tarahumara eat such minuscule portions and amounts of animal products and meat, and they are virtually plant-based at over 94% vegan, their cholesterol was optimal. Rather than their cup being already filled to the brim, such as found in the heavy-meat eating, or lowcarb or paleo less-healthy diets, the Tarahumara people's cholesterol was healthy and low. And thus, you could directly see that as soon as they ingested animal products, such as meat, or even just 1 single egg, the cholesterol in their blood could be seen shooting up. This is the 1st direct evidence confirming the lipid hypothesis in a remote primal aboriginal native population.
As a side note, be aware that Ancel Keys is also the man who invented the diet known as the Mediterranean Diet. Essentially this is also a mainly plant-based diet, however it includes small amounts of fish. However it recommends that people stay away from red meat, and emphasizes good fats such as Omega6 poly-unsaturated fats in the form of Olive oil. Essentially the Mediterranean Diet is also a Vegetarian Diet plus fish. If you look up peer-reviewed studies on the results of the Mediterranean Diet originated by Ancel Keys, you will also find it turns out to be extremely healthy. Tests show it also reduces the incidence of heart disease. Note that the Mediterranean diet is lower in carbs and higher in (Omega6 PUFA) fats. Thus, the common factor here is not the amount of carbs, high-carb, or low-carb, the common factor which is reducing the damage to the heart between the Mediterranean diet and the Tarahumara diet is the avoidance of meat. The omission of animal fats, which are (bad) saturated fats, and red and white meat. This is what is lowering the cholesterol and lowering the risk of heart attacks.
Also note that the diet that is producing some of the fittest athletes in the world is virtually entirely vegetarian, and loaded full of carbs, and packed with huge volumes of grains. Healthy whole grains lower cholesterol, and also lower the risk of cancers, such as colon cancer. Rice and wheat in the Mediterranean diet are grains. Rice and Wheat in the Japanese diet are grains. Corn in the Tarahumara diet is a grain. Corn and wheat in the Kenyan marathon athletes' diets are grains. Paleo purports that no person is paleo if they ingest grain, therefore all of these diets, being eaten natively and resulting in some of the healthiest, strongest and fittest people on earth, are in fact veritably Anti-Paleo. The diet they are eating is almost the opposite of paleo, entirely against paleo. They are eating quantities of dairy also, albeit in small quantities of barely a few percent, but that also disqualifies all of their diets from being classified as paleo. They also shun meat and have low cholesterol, which is also anti-paleo. In addition to that, these populations are eating actual sugar. White sugar. The fastest kenyan medal winners are eating 2% sugar, the Tarahumara are ingesting 1% to 2% simple sugars, and the Japanese Okinawan centenarians who live the longest in the world are also eating 1% sugar. We already know, that sugar does not cause diabetes. But although these populations are ingesting a whopping 75% to 85% carbs, even including a bit of that as sugar, they have extremely low incidences of diabetes, and they are thin and lean. Obesity is virtually unknown. Thus carbs in themselves do not make you fat. Especially when eaten in the form of a plant-based diet. A more likely scenario is that eating fat, meat, and eating *too much* make you fat. Because as you can see, these populations are eating whopping amounts of carbs, and even eating sugar, and not only aren't they fat, but they can run 200 miles and are some of the fittest people on earth.
"Maize (grain) was their main staple, meat consumption was rare." "Their diet was found to be generally of high nutritional quality and would, by all criteria, be considered antiatherogenic (heart healthy)." The Tarahumara are ingesting a predominantly plant-based 96% vegetarian diet, and this is resulting in super-athletes who have been found running 100 miles, 200 miles, and an astounding 435 mile multi-marathon runs with little to no disease, like no other athletes on earth.
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