What Humans ACTUALLY Evolved to Eat! | Dr Miki Ben-Dor, Ep 76

welcome to the plant free MD podcast with Dr Anthony chafee where we discuss diet and nutrition and how this affects health and chronic disease and show you how you can use this to optimize your health and happiness both mentally and physically [Music] hey guys just want to take a second to thank our sponsor at carnivore bar I don't promote many products because honestly all you need to be healthy is to just eat meat for those times that you're out hiking road tripping or stuck at work and you want nutritious snack that is just meat fat and salt if you want it the carnivore bar is a great option so I like this product not because it's just pure meat but also because I want the carnivore Market to thrive as well and the more we support meat only products the more meat only products that will be available in the mainstream so if this sounds like something you'd like to get behind check it out using my discount code Anthony to get 10 off which also applies to subscriptions giving you 25 off total all right thanks guys everyone as uh Dr Anthony Chaffey I'm here with a very special guest Dr Mickey bandur who has done quite a lot of work in Paloma anthropology as well as other fields and showing uh exactly the evidence and data that we have to show that humans are carnivores uh quite recently he came out with a paper called the evolution of human trophic levels during the pleistocene and this shows uh when he's in conclusion we hear him talk about it more but that humans have been apex predators top of the food chain and carnivores for at least around 2 million years uh Dr bandor thank you so much for coming on I really appreciate you taking the time yeah great to be here good um for for people who haven't come across your work uh and and your papers can you tell us a little bit about yourself and and some of the the work you've been doing recently yeah sure um I uh as I said the day before before we came on I I did I finished my PhD when I was 68. so I came across Palio when I was 58. unfortunately because I turned out that I had a terrible sensitivity to gluten and that caused a lot of things being seen very thin in my childhood I was extremely thin and but I I ate like crazy but still and I loved bread so and I had terrible headaches and and stomach aches and nobody could explain it at the time there was no uh you know knowledge of of celiac even so anyway at the age of 58 I came across a Paleo and at that time I realized that I was eating the wrong stuff for 58 years so I always envy people like you for instance who discovered it much much earlier and you know get all the benefits for many years and that that discovery led me to find my mission because I've I've quit work uh at the age of 52 so about six years earlier and I was studying for myself no no not for any particular uh certification about hunter-gatherers because I just liked it I disliked them and I always had the feeling that we are kind of aren't together that are stuck in a reality that is completely different to the reality in which we evolved so it must have a lot of repercussions and I didn't think much about the food mismatch but and then I wrote a book I wrote a book about uh more about the mental aspects of being in that situation and then I said okay let's let's add some something about the mismatch and to my horror I started reading uh you know the books uh of uh you know good calories bad calories and at that time the book about fed it was not was not yet published but I that's when I understood that we're living in one big uh problem and and so I sort of got myself a mission to help to help spread the news and I saw that there is a like opening in anthropology paleontopology for some reason paleontologists didn't join that movement and that was really surprising to me uh because the the basic template is that we have to eat what we were we were evolve to eat it's so obvious uh so I I just couldn't understand why why they are not supporting this movement and actually I even heard or read some Expressions against it so I decided that I'll go and the study methodically what people ate and become a qualified you know officially qualified to speak about that and that's why that's how I came to to do the PhD in uh paleoan topology or actually it's an archeology but in Israel there's no paleontology that's called paleontopology so the that paleont apologies is actually studied in the prehistory section of the archeology Department okay very good so here I am yeah that's great and you came from a background in economics is that right oh yeah yeah and so I started economics and I and I studied business administration in a very good European School and actually I was I was offered to become to to be to have a you know academic career at the time but I had such a terrible add because of my uh gluten sensitivity that I just couldn't I just couldn't do it yeah so I worked for 52 years in you know commercial settings uh until I just had enough and I had enough so that I could live yeah so I left yeah well I think that um yeah I've always I've always uh you know like you know different economists and you know like Thomas Soules you know I I read a lot of his his work and just like you know the analytical mind that an economist has to have to look at things very very clinically and objectively I think is um you know very beneficial in any I really wish I studied economics in my undergrad just to use get that way of thinking and logical um uh yeah because this is one of my advantages this is one of my advantages in just analyzing the situation is that I bring some economic discipline yeah to the discussion and the economic discipline uh to me means first of all how much don't speak in general terms try to to be quantitative and the second one is look at the alternatives so everything has to be measured against an alternative not by itself and this led me for instance for for I think the very important understanding that economically speaking we just could not be omnivores that can do whatever they want and very flexible in our diet because they return the energetic return on plants is about one tenth of that of animals so it's like going to the supermarket and something costs 10 times more than the the other the stock that you bought until today all of a sudden something costs 10 times and you have to buy it you would go broke so uh so that that's that's why humans could not could not live on plants because they return on animals is so much higher and and we were acting like any species at the border of our energetic return so you know you have to you have to maximize the return yeah yeah it was like that in economics it's always compared to what you know and it's just yeah well this is really good okay compared to what what are you looking at you know and and if you don't put it in that context things things just don't make sense and a lot of a lot of these arguments when put in those that framework you know they they begin to break down quite clearly or or be strengthened and you say okay actually that does make a lot of sense you know because you're comparing this to something else and and obviously you know when you get 10 times the yield from you know animal you know animal products and foods that that does make a lot of sense um can you take us through you know your paper you know the evolution of human trophic levels during the pleistocene and you know you you laid out a very very uh you know considered argument and in various different aspect to argue that you know or or to show the evidence for humans being you know apex predators which as far as I know I don't I can't think of really an apex predator that grazes so that would really mean you know carnivores right yeah the the Audible and this is a definition that is used by zoologists to denote a carnival that consume 70 or more 7-0 that is or more of their food from animals so that was my conclusion that humans were hyper carnivores uh and the the I think the main new things that I brought it's so completely new because other people did it as well but not in such a scale is to look at the body because the problem the problem first of all let's define the problem let's define why uh paleontologists think that we were flexible in our diet so we were omnivores so first of all 75 percent of the mammals are omnivores as the deficiency the definition of omnivore that somebody eat from more than one trophic level so plants and animals in this case and uh but that doesn't say anything about the quantity of plants and animals or relative quantity that these mammals eat so yes we are omnivores but again and also it turns out that most of the mammals like 80 percent of them are specialized in other words they are not generalists they won't eat anything they specialize in either plants or animals and they complete their diet from either plants or animals so humans uh actually the fact that we are omnivores does not mean that we are flexible and I thought to myself okay the the problem is that when you ask uh or when people ask what was the diet they went immediately to paleo topologist unfortunately these guys just don't have the tools to answer the question but they don't know they did those are the tools so one tool which actually is giving them the answer is the stable isotopes the problem with stabilized stops in which by the way most of the studies of stable isotopes show that humans were carnivores but really top carnivores uh until quite recently and actually when they moved from meat they first of all moved to fish and only then move to plants right at the end of the Paleolithic so uh I they come to them they don't they don't have I mean what you find in archaeological sites is a pile of bones and then the and stone tools and if you're lucky you find some plants residues but it doesn't tell you anything about the relative quantity uh first of all not on all all the remains of what they ate actually were in this place that you dig and second of all uh plants remains don't don't you know don't stay don't don't I'm not discoverable easily because they just uh you know disappear so they they they they actually tended to go to hunt together uh societies uh that they could see so the main one being the Hansa because the hands are live in Tanzania Tanzania is close to the equator it's close to where uh human evolution at least the early stage of human evolution took place uh all the five Gorges in Tanzania so [Music] they went to the other and the ads I eat about 30 40 meat and 60 percent uh plants actually quite a lot of it was actually honey so I looked at the that the analogy and it seems to me absolutely misleading in a very very important way because the large fauna that was present when humans evolved just does not present is not there for the other to take they just don't hunt any elephants they don't have rhinos they don't harm peoples and actually even if they did they um in early paleolithic there were many many species of large animals and today we're only left to three or four of what is called Mega herbivores that's over a thousand kilos anyway the environment is not the same the technologies that they have is not the same uh and I I just been there last year and you go from and Goron Goro to their area and it's completely different goal and Goro is a savannah in a crater because many animals and very few plants do it in other words like because they are mostly uh you know helps so there are many herbivores but there are not many fruity votes for instance in in the savannah so ah the the environment is not the same the technology is not the same and the analogy is false it's faulty so I said where do I look so I decided to look first of all into our body because really the evolution uh uh happened first of all in our body learning our Behavior too but but in the body so I was able to find quite a few I don't remember I think about 15 pieces of evidence that show that our Revolution was towards carnivore and the the ones that I liked most are when others researchers compared omnivores or compared the other carnivores to us and actually found out that we are in the same group with the carnivals for instance in stomach acidity it's not activity we even even with the scavengers so even more carnivore than the carnival but uh infected cells distribution in the winning age so that that's that's the kind of evidence that I was looking for and I listed them one by one and tried to group them into some groups in terms of the strengths of the evidence like which ones are actually attesting to a change in a trophic level and which ones are uh showing specialization because that is quite important if you sow if you see for instance say let's say thank God morphology so we have a long small intestine and a short a large intestine and this is the opposite of chimpanzee so it shows uh actually a trend towards specialization yeah because we are specialization is when you give up uh you give up flexibility okay and and this is what actually this Evolution caused it caused us to give up the flexibility to feed on a large quantity of fiber yeah but actually most of the energy a plant energy in the in the on on the planet is stored in fiber so a lot of animals most animals I don't know actually of one that's not that rely on Plants I make sure that they can utilize fiber but we actually gave up that ability so it meant that we actually specialize and the third one that was like I said the most convincing in my point of view is that it put us in the same category uh as a carnivores so this is the let's say the physiological I don't know how to what details you want me to go no no no that's fine like um you know I mean I think that the main thing that people talk about and you know I I've spoken to other people about this and said well you know where the randomized control trials what is this study that shows that humans are carnivores and you'll and you know you know ignoring the fact that all the the data that we have looking at different diets is all epidemiologically based anyway and we don't have a lot of randomized controlled trials showing you know anything in one way or the other and so you know it's you know so so how do you how do you go about proving uh that humans are are one thing or the other and so that's why you know uh you know I think that you have to look at other other sources like you did and so you know with you know how would you respond to someone saying like well where's your randomized control trial saying that humans are carnivores or or not well you see Randomness control trials are actually trying in the end to simulate reality this is what they are and we have to we have to understand that this simulation will be flawed forever now that's not my uh I I really don't don't put much faith in random numbers control trial as far as the and nutrition is concerned uh because you'd be a very very difficult time controlling the variables and so really if you look uh yeah as I saw one of your uh podcasts with a nice girl I forgot her name and you're talking about anecdotes and what is the importance of anecdote so I thought I'll talk about it a little bit myself so I wrote about it in one of my posts in the actually a you know traditional societies that Western price visited they were quite healthy uh and but they didn't have any corruption they say they didn't they didn't have science to speak of so what they relied on was anecdotes the thing is that anecdotes actually the the difference between them and us is that the anecdotes accumulated in the memory of a small group and stayed there and it was useful were useful but we just you know we just don't have a depository of anecdotes that that they will guide us and that depository of anecdotes in the tribe led to a very very healthy people even consuming agricultural diets okay they didn't live to 100 or 120 and as Western price marked the ones that ate meat were always looked healthier than the one that relied on the agriculture plant diet but still they were quite healthy they didn't have any of the westernized you know illnesses uh so they were quite healthy based on anecdotes that they accumulated and this is the way this is how uh we were this what happened is that as soon as the depository of anecdotes disappeared with the modern uh living and the Reliance of science on science that they are held deteriorated so that's my answer to this randomized control trial yeah so sort of being so sharp you'll cut yourself you know like you're using it was like oh well we diagnosed this and analyze this with all these different metrics and you came up with the wrong answer but because you have convinced yourself this was such a such a a you know thorough scientific Endeavor that you're very very bought into it and uh so you can end up cutting you as well right yeah um I was going to say too you know some of the things that that you know we can see pre and post Agricultural Revolution I know that you've spoken about um your brain size you know this this was going up steadily and quite markedly in the in the recent you know hundreds of thousands of years millions of years and then and then there was a sharp decline uh around 20 000 years ago but then also you know we see other data um you know with teeth and jaws and and other sorts of um you know features that there are it's hard evidence I mean this is not like a maybe situation it's like at this point it was X at this point it was y uh can you go into that a little bit and and seemingly that that coordinated with you know the introduction and and Adoption of more plant-based eating and certainly the Agricultural Revolution right right you know it's amazing if you see the teeth of that are discovered in archaeological sites a million years ago 50 000 years ago they're perfect absolutely perfect all of them are there and they're only perfect State not that there was no you you find a teeth here and there with problems but mostly it's just perfect and these people lived 50 40 50 years uh and then about 15 000 years ago in Morocco is the first site with the very strong evidence for plants food consumption and the teeth are crooked and they are they are full of uh you know they are rookie so the the pathology paleopathology is just another proof that they are that we did not eat that much carbohydrates at least in a form of sugars you know or like carbohydrates uh not I mean technically speaking fiber is also carbide so I have to define it but yes we ate we we ate plants this that's something that has to be emphasized uh to be fair people ate plants and you find residues of just about anything you can think of that is food in nature so there's no question that people ate plants enough to cause that pathologist that we find later on in the Egyptians and even if late Paleolithic people yeah yeah and then um so I guess and that's the thing too you know we you do see that the evidence of people eating more plants and then getting more of the you know the Western diseases or these sorts of issues I guess you can start differentiating between you know uh uh survival and uh optimization of of your health as well and while we may have eaten plants you know if they were available or if we needed to to survive or use medicinally you know that again would be different than than eating them because they were optimal um and I think that uh that might but they're not even they're not even the same plants yeah yeah it's not like we ate we I mean together we go today to a supermarket will not recognize anything as food yeah yeah so yeah but I didn't answer a question about the brain I want to speak about the brain so the brain started to grow uh about 2.5 2.6 million years ago with Homo habilis and then grow further with Homo erectus grew further with the homo sapiens and there was some species in between but that's not the place to go into details anyway so I asked myself why why it grew and this is by the way it's funny but it's it's not a question that the paleontology has I was surprised and so I came up with the with the with the answer I don't know if it's the answer of course it's a hypothesis like any anything else in the history or definitely in praise to it where you can prove nothing but the then I found out that the large animals started to disappear much earlier in paleoanthropologies realize and they all know about the late quaternary megaphone Extinction which took place about the the about 40 50 000 years ago uh picked about 20 000 years ago 10 000 years ago everybody knows about that one but uh I found out that it became my it became began much much earlier so let's say I'm not sure when exactly but six seven hundred thousand years ago so the theory goes that in order to hunt smaller animals you need to be smarter and this is again something that the paleontologists couldn't imagine I don't know why but they thought you know wow uh an elephant is a very frightening animal so it must have been very difficult to hunt but it's not because elephants Don't Escape so you just dig a hole cover it with leaves and branches and wait and an elephant will fall especially smaller ones that are not as experienced as the big one so we will fall and that's it you can finish it is is he can move so it's it's actually very very simple I mean you need courage I'm not I'm not saying you don't but uh thought to hunt larger animals is to limit their movement in one way or another driving them into a Kenyan or something a mud for instance that's also it works uh and then you can finish them with the wooden spear you don't even you just have to make them bleed so in the bleed enough time you're not in a hurry because they're not running away uh they're done and you eat them and you one of them will last you for a month so uh hunting large animals they did not have much energy and also didn't be much brain but when you start to hunt smaller animals they they become smaller and smaller targets they move faster and faster so they are more difficult to hunt so you need to be smarter to hunt them so you need to develop new tools so you need to develop what they call composite tools that are composed of more than one system so you have told the wood and you have to have the stone and and you combine them in a weapon system that is a fast and can chase uh a small animal so that's what happened in my opinion and that is the the at the beginning the brain expanded you know for us to become hunters in the first place so really and by the way this is a general phenomena that Predators have a larger brain than herbivores because really you don't need much of a brain to go and eat grass yeah but you do need some brain to to catch an animal yeah so I so that's how it grew and uh but why then why it became all of a sudden smaller uh about 20 000 years ago and it so happened that it coincides with increased consumption of plants now you can say and I think that you said it is that because they ate the plants the brain became smaller that's possibility but to me it became smaller because they did did it hmm and evolution doesn't leave expensive tissue that it doesn't need so to grow or to become a farmer I mean I know there must be very smart Farmers around but at that time you know compared to hunting that you have to go every day and solve uh problems and know so much about nature just to be able to track an animal compared to that you know eating plants and growing plants doesn't demand that much brain yeah that's my conclusion about the brain yeah and then it could be a combination of both too you know we're not we're not required you know as well and we're also not you know getting all the nutrition and we're and we're you know curtailing it with uh for sure yeah for sure for sure yeah and then that that um you know the the mass extinctions as well of the megaphone that seems to coincide as well with the adoption of Agriculture as well that likely because yeah yeah for sure the animals became the cell are so small that they just could not supply the fat and here we come to the fat side of the business because animals oh humans can consume more like maybe 35 of the calories as a protein so they have to complete it with something else either carbs or fat that's it these are the sweet and so smaller animals have less fat one of the reasons is because they have to run and they have to escape so they cannot rely on the size because they have to rise and on the speed and of course their speed will go down if they like we are I mean we can see it in our in our situation yeah so yeah so the last megaphone Extinction was so severe that they just people had to had to stop they relying on Plants more and it just showed the fact that we moved to agriculture just showed that we could not rely on the natural abundance of plants we had to grow them ourselves yeah and and I think that that uh you know illustrates your point earlier about you know comparing the headset to you know our our genetic Origins this is a very different time you know we didn't have the megafauna um you know that we were hunting before these massive animals in abundance that we were normally hunting and we had to sort of look at other things so if we're trying to extrapolate what we've been living as as a genetic population for two million years we really can't look at at those and also you know I think hadza is is um a little bit of a problematic group to look at in any case because then they're sort of um you know like you say they're getting like 30 of their of their food is coming from meat whereas you look at you know the Inuit it's 100 I mean they're not there's nothing else to eat at the North Pole anyway and uh you know and you look at people you know during different ice ages you know where where was the honey available you know in the in The Baobab trees there but the argument I tell you the argument there is that the dads are living close to where human evolved yeah they do but the environment is not the same yeah and then technology look for instance bow and arrow really appeared first about 60 000 years ago so for two million over 2 million years we had to hunt without bowing you know uh so we had to rely on on larger animals we just could not hunt the smaller faster anymore yeah yeah unless we were really lucky so you do find smaller animals from time to time in in Paleolithic early periodic sites okay yeah maybe larger yeah and that's another good point as well um that I didn't even uh even think to go into when I when I sort of spoke about this uh previously is the jewels you know we we have tools that are that are I mean obviously you know we made tools to hunt and everything like that but I I didn't even think about the distinction between tools for hunting and tools for agriculture you know and um I think you I I watched I mean where you pointed out that you know tools for agriculture didn't didn't come around until about you know you know sort of 15 20 000 years ago before that it was all hunting you know and so you know I mean I I don't see how a spear is going to be a an advantage to to get fruit from a tree certainly not a bow and arrow you certainly don't have to have to catch a lettuce and um you know one I I have uh you know I've pointed out to people uh on the vegan side of this that you know your brains probably grew in order to you know be hunters and use tools and they said and I was like yo what's what's the argument for or you know our brains growing to get fruit you know why and get plants you know what you know like a chimpanzee and a gorilla you know they they stayed pretty stable ours changed if we were just eating the same things they were you know why why would what would influence our brain to change um and so and uh um you know they didn't really have an answer for that but but I think that's that's also a very very good point that you know the tools before uh you know that 20 000 years ago were just designed for hunting yeah but I must say you know that the stone tools uh most of them have a sharp edge so the argument goes that the charmage could be used to process plants as well and there are some some signs on the edge itself that show that they were it was used to possess some plants material so uh in that sense you know it's not exactly black and white picture but but if you if you look for tools that were specific for plants processing they appear very late yeah like you said 15 000 years ago maybe okay yeah yeah I mean I suppose yeah any sort of edged weapon can be used for all sorts of different things um but uh yeah I wouldn't I wouldn't imagine that uh that a spear they have to work for instance the height you know they have to work uh uh so it's not just cutting meat yeah uh that they use the tools for yeah yeah definitely um so you know that that's something that we sort of touched on um you know the different sorts of plants and eating like specific ones we're eating different plants and that you know that um that you know obviously certain plants have to be prepared uh in certain ways or else they can be quite quite dangerous and poisonous and you know certainly you know we're probably likely eating very very different plants than we were even at the beginning of of uh agriculture um can you talk a bit a bit about that on like uh I mean you know the differences in in the plants that we're eating now as well thank you well you know the it's quite obvious that the fruits for instance I want I once calculated that actually a chimpanzee gets a most of its energy from from fiber it turns it turns fiber into fats As We Know and and feed on the fat and actually he gets more energy from from the fat of the fiber then it gets from the sugar in the fruit uh so uh one of the researchers rang and tried once to eat the fruits that that the chimpanzees it just could use two people and really not that that sweet and these were supposedly ripe fruits so the fruit is completely different than what we have uh um tubers again you know they were bred to have less toxins and less fiber anything and all this all the all the plants that contain carbohydrates had that you can see that the fiber removing the fiber was the main uh main task okay the humans they took uh they did it with the of course with the this is why uh grains were so uh popular because you can remove the fiber quite easily mechanically uh from the from the from the grains ah so yeah so that was the domestication is the removal is the one big Enterprise to remove fiber yeah and so and then of course what you get is a a big shot of sugar you know when you eat yeah that's a that's a funny thing too you know obviously we've had um you know processing white rice and um and and other grains that have you know remove the fiber and the husks and things like that then it was like fat it's like no no that's where all the vitamins are you want that you want the fiber so brown rice is better you know whole wheat all that sort of thing and and now sort of coming back the other way like oh actually you know we really want to do white rice because you know it doesn't have all these other products so we're sort of we just keep going back and forth um and uh so I think that's funny that's that's come back around full circle um to say that you actually want to eat right white rice I mean and that's the thing too you know I mean we have these traditions of food preparation especially with plants and and I you know they obviously you know like you say you know this history of of anecdotal evidence you just have have these Traditions like hey this this works this doesn't and you have you know years and generations of learned knowledge and you know like this is why you know people would peel potatoes and peel roots and tubers and then now all of a sudden you know just in the last 20 years like no no that's where all the vitamins are and turns out it's like well yeah that's where all the like the poison is too you know it's this barrier defense against insects and animals boring into the tuber uh to eat it or the fruit even and um and this is why you know we we traditionally would peel potatoes which are nightshades and uh that's where more of the toxins were and you know and if they turn you know that yeah do you the Ethiopians they eat the you know TEF it's a kind of uh cereal that they have and they they bread that they they they you they first of all they're fermented the death for two weeks two whole weeks they just sit on it before they consume it now as an economist I tell you this is expensive to keep two weeks a inventory but but they had to do it and if you ask them why they do it they don't know they just know that if they don't do it they get the stomach aches and then they become sick uh so you know but by the way you know this is the anecdotes that we lost this kind of you know preparation yeah the modern society you eat without preparing you don't even know most people that eat you know grains and legumes don't know how much preparation went to the went into it before pre-preparation before cooking in the in healthy traditional societies so you have the blue what do you call it the blue spots or whatever or the blue zones yeah yeah but the blue zones are exactly this societies that they know how to prepare the food how to prepare or pre-prepared their their food before cooking so this is one of the difference between the you know blue zones the other differences but anyway yeah this is one and then you know we think that we can eat anything yeah well and and thing too with like like sprouted grains people saying that that's you know you want to have grains that are sprouted and all these sorts of things and I agree if you're going to eat plants there are ways of doing this to make it less less of a problem but I mean right but this this this you know uh just just goes to show the principle that plants are trying to stay alive and they use defense chemicals to protect themselves and so that that and and we haven't we sort of been out of that evolutionary arms race you know keeping up with these defense chemicals and so we have to do these this outside preparation to make them less toxic to us and so that that just again shows the principle that plants are toxic and so if you want if you want to survive that's one thing if you want to live optimally and have the absolute best health possible you know I would I would argue that you would really want to just avoid these things completely I mean even if you you've got them you know devoid of toxin just you know zero poison level it's still not going to have the nutrient quality of you know especially fatty meat and so you're still going to have this disparity in uh in health benefit that you'll get from this I think anyway yeah it's always a question of y'all you know how much restricted you how how how restricted do you want your life to be and you gain health but uh you know you have to be very disciplined uh I did all of them I did paleo I did the kettle I did the carnivore no argument Carnival is the best yeah it's the best you feel the best no question about it as soon as you give up all the rest all but all all of it not you know and eat only meat my God this is the this is the the best the best feeling that you had that you can have ah but uh I I will be the first one to admit that it's very very difficult to maintain to be really really convinced and really disciplined personality to to keep it for a long time yeah and and yeah it I mean it can be I think it's um you know for me it was it was just an automatic thing I didn't see this that hard because I just I just learned how poisonous plants were I'm like yeah no I'm not eating that and uh and so it was very easy for me because I just I just wanted to avoid that stuff and then when somebody got back no no I don't I don't drink coffee I feel much better without it and uh so even even though I work uh you know pretty crazy hours at the hospital and then you know sometimes I'll do like a 36 hour shift or even a 48 or 60 hour shift when I'm on call for the weekend uh sometimes you'll get sleep sometimes it's very busy and you may only you know catch an hour or two sleep or something like that and then you're working Monday and so you know that can be very very difficult I would not be able to do that if I wasn't doing what I'm doing now uh without without a lot of supplements and uh and and stimulants um but you know I find that when I do drink coffee or generally if I were to take something I would take like a caffeine pill and just avoid the other things that are in coffee that you know would detract um I I feel good for a few hours I have energy I'm you know beaming and then I just absolutely just feel like garbage I just I didn't regret ever having touched it and like the rest of the day I'm like oh why did I do that why did I do that and so um even then you know it's very difficult very difficult to believe yeah how how bad plants can be yeah because you know we were raised with the healthy salad yeah so yeah yeah yeah dangerous a little bit yeah exactly it's like you know I thought that was it was a pretty established principle in botany was it this is in Horticulture I mean this is just this is just what plants do this is how they protect themselves you know like all living things there they are able to defend themselves and you know they can't run away or fight back so they they need to be uh have other means and they have the different things as well that are actually quite interesting you know you know mimicking you know caterpillar eggs and things like that so that you know butterfly doesn't lay eggs on on that leaf but um you know but by and large they all use poison as far as I know I don't actually know of any plant that doesn't that isn't poisonous to something you know yeah you know that they have more genes than humans yeah yeah I think this is the main reason is because they have to produce so many chemicals to protect themselves yeah yeah that's a good point um and you yeah you're talking about the you know being restricted in uh in the way we eat as as uh you know if you wanted to do a carnivore diet um in in the modern day and age and there's someone I was speaking to uh who who basically cured his major depression and other other major issues where he was you know suicidal for decades and just really wasn't able to function um as a as an adult and he and he reversed all of these things on by going carnivore and it really changed his life and he's like one of the most I think and that's actually his his handle on social media is the thankful carnivore and he is so thankful because this is really giving him his life back and we're giving him his life in the first place because he was quite unwell for most of his adult life and and he was saying that you know like he doesn't see it as restrictive he says it was like major depression is restrictive diabetes you know heart disease and obesity are restrictive you know like this this is freeing this gives me life this is allows me to live my life fully and I like that sort of glass half full sort of look at concentrate on the benefits right yeah and it does you know I mean I and and that's and that was sort of a natural for me too was it's like that's poison I don't want that and then when it did slip in I I would I would just not feel as good and it would just be like but yeah I don't like that I just you know so now I have a natural aversion to it it's not I don't go through sort of wishing I could it's becoming easier and easier as you followed yeah I think so yeah especially with that sort of positive mind mindset as well right yeah which sort of you know leads to the question you know what what is the the good doctor eat now what do you what do you uh uh what are your dietary habits now right now uh it's it's very recent but it's just meat and water oh good but it's very recent in the last few days oh good uh yeah I I was with my kids in in Canada in New York so we ate and it was quite impossible to to keep it but but just meat and water that's it I decided that's it uh at my age I don't have no man I don't know how many years I have left but these years I would just do meat and water yeah that's it well I think you're gonna have a lot more years with meat and water than you would otherwise as well hopefully yeah yeah um and so so now like are you just doing uh just like red red meat or any sort of meat and obviously going for a fatty uh sets as well I tried to do red my wife insists on buying a uh you know chicken from time to time but but I have I have a little problem with that to guide my wife towards the more expensive meat uh but I I take quite a lot of liver I love liver but again I don't think it's healthy to eat a lot of liver so I tried to limit it to once a week but sometimes I do two twice a week yeah uh we we buy uh what kind of meat add meat you know I don't know how you call it in English but the meat of the head [Music] yeah yeah the brain I eat brain as well but but not the brain it's very very tasty and very fat so that that and yeah any any red meat especially like you said fat it's really neat it's very expensive so rebuy I can't I could live on ribeye but it's just uh unbelievably expensive so bad yeah I mean I think everywhere it's basically doubled in price in the last year I would I was basically just eating ribeye get it in bulk from Costco and it was much cheaper that way and and now it's it's literally doubled in price from Costco as well and so I just you know said forget it and now I'm just doing like New York's mostly and then just like we'll melt some some butter onto that as well in the first place yeah yeah exactly yeah it's unbelievable how much because it is like yeah maybe if I can try it out forty dollars a kill or fifty dollars a kilo oh wow yeah yeah yeah it's like 20 20 something dollars a pound yeah yeah and that's U.S dollars yeah so like in Australia be for people in Australia to like add on another third to that you know and so that would be quite expensive yeah yeah even more it can even cost seventy dollars yeah which is yeah which is not yeah that that's not really reasonable yes just to try to be eating that every day yeah it's good it's it to me actually to me it was reasonable yeah [Laughter] yeah yeah it's usually the other way around it's usually like uh you know I was just like can you not spend so much money you know I was just like what are you doing chicken this peasant bird like let's go right there white birds I wanted to say people did not consume birds or meat I mean the birds are there's very little evidence for birds as meat sauce in very different very special situation very seasonably uh with Nets you can get uh you know reasonable quantity of meat but really like when the birds migrate so it's like what one day a year or whatever so Birds human did not consume Birds okay all right when did that when did that pick up where did that pick up yeah when birds are a more cheaper to produce yeah that's it that's a domestication of birds yeah okay yeah yeah because yeah I mean there isn't much meat on a duck and if you're trying to get that thing with a bone arrow you know good luck that's just too difficult to catch and for the reward you know yeah absolutely yeah that's a good point um and then you talk about fat as well fat being something that we we went after what what sort of you know evidence do we have of that that we were going after after the fat and what what is that like an optimal fat ratio uh for humans look at the evidence there what if I one I don't know the name of the jeans but but I agree I bring a paper in in what in my in in the paper that you mentioned a cited paper uh funny such as a find compared humans to chimpanzees and he said that the actually humans turn off genes that allow them to consume more fat and chimpanzees turn on genes that allow them to consume more sugars so humans actually evolve to eat more fat no question about it the pattern of hunting animals also show that humans were concentrating on fat uh the main one the really shocking one to me is that human specialized in hunting uh Prime adults Prime adults are very the you know the two three years old already three four maybe years old animals that already passed their growing stage and they contain in general they contain more fat Than The Young and the old so the young grow so they don't have cannot allow yourself to it a lot of fat results and they all already don't eat well that's the way that usually they die is because their teeth become inefficient so they don't have a lot of fat so the prime adults have more fat now for a predator to concentrate on Prime adults doesn't make sense because these are the guys that run faster more experienced more alert to to to the to the Hunter so they are more difficult to hunt but yet humans specialized on Hunting them and again as an economist there must be a very good reason for somebody to spend more energy to hunt a special segment of the population and the only reason I could find was that they have more fair otherwise there's no reason whatsoever that we could find for that behavior so and also in that case you can go to ethnography and you can fine I don't know how many but many many examples of of recent hunter-gatherers that say that we had for fat we want fat animals and in Australia for instance there are two evidence that I cite I think in the paper or not that paper in other people that they that Hunters when they hunt a fatless animal they just leave it they just don't consume they just just give it up they go live it and go so that's how fat how important fat is and when you when you think about it if we are limited in the amount of protein that we can eat and the plants are very expensive to get energetically so we are left with completing you know if we don't eat plants it's 65 60 65 percent of the calories for fat yeah so that's that's what I think was the case in most of the the Paleolithic is that we ate about 60 percent of our calories 50 60 depends a fun fact and you know you mentioned you mentioned Australian aboriginals I actually spoken to a few down here just in the hospital setting and um just got into this conversation and you know they and they you know were sick and unwell and they sort of brought up that you know this could be to do with with things that they were eating and and you know the one gentleman I was speaking to sort of looked at and said you know I was like yeah you know when I was a kid we only ate meat and everyone was thin and healthy and strong and you know our grandparents like that they were they weren't having these problems and and he even said to me he's like yeah you know eating me is really good and he pointed at me and he said and you know the most important part is the fat like that it was it was you know just right away and I was like couldn't agree with you more on that the Native Americans as well uh I remember I mean as a kid you were learning their hunting practices when they would take down a deer or something like that they would skin it and and take out the entrails and then they would actually remove the haunches and the hind legs and hang them up on the tree and and I at the time it was explained to me that this was sort of an offering to the spirits and and um you know as a sacrifice but it also lines up with the leanest portions of the animal you know it has the least amount of fat behind behind quarters uh in a in a deer or an animal there's gonna have that and then you get the four quarters and get all the you know the uh the abdomen and everything like that is going to have much more fat and so it just happens to line up with you know getting the most fat out of the animal yeah that's right yeah no there are plenty of uh evidence for that I mean it's just a yeah you know it's it's unbelievable how easy we can forget that we can ignore I mean take Loren codeine I don't know if you heard about it he was the first paleo I think that made a big deal about paleo he wrote the book and you'll die yeah and he did research but he was a you know a product of his uh time and he had friends that thought that saturated fat was the source of all evils okay so you have a paper where he is trying to prove that humans ate fat but he wasn't saturated fat [Laughter] but the numbers are there if you take the numbers from newspaper you you find that the saturated fat was a very prominent portion of the FED that they had yeah obviously so but but still he had to show and he had to you know live with the with his friends with the notion with the spirit of the time yeah and and that's it too you know I mean when I was a kid in the 80s yeah we learned that humans were you know apex predators top of the food chain we ate all these animals and then as as we went along we were saying that no no no actually meat's really bad for you and kills you and plants are good and not only are plants better and are just you know our forebears were just you know these silly people that didn't know any better and they just all were dying of heart disease in their 20s or something like ridiculous like that but that no no we're actually herbivores and we actually evolved as herbivores and it's like we've got done such a 180 and it's all I think stems at that nonsense that that saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for you and and because of that it's just completely taken over you know I mean there's a hundred years of scientific literature talking about the the importance of of fat and a meat-based diet in fact you know people were like you know uh Dr Salisbury in the 1800s um you know uh Professor stefonson um you know with fat of the land you know the uh Salisbury was it was a clinician he was actually you know putting people on a pure red meat and water diet sort of Salisbury steak comes from and uh and he he was getting rid of things like rheumatoid arthritis Crohn's gout ulcerative colitis all these things like that and you know and it was up with future literature and people looking at this and going oh okay well let's look into that ketogenic diets as well being used for to treat uh diabetes type 1 and type 2 for over 100 years and and treating migraines and even epilepsy for 90 years now and all of that's just been just thrown away just because oh that's bad yeah this is the problem with the science you know science is a is a big problem yeah science is a is a culture phenomena as much as anything else and there's so many biases that go into it especially when in nutrition it's even it's the worth yes absolutely so really I just it may be better just to ignore science whatsoever yeah just go just go to pray history just go to Evolution just go to biology I mean yeah yeah you get the you have to measure the evidence based on scientific principles but uh boy you know how many people are built to do that how many people we have the time and the and the know-how to compare you know randomized control trials um yeah and even to recognize yeah the validity of of those randomized control trials and and looking at other things you know because a lot of a lot of nutrition is is epidemiology which when done well can can give you interesting information but it's never going to show uh you know hard facts about things in a conclusive way uh even randomized controlled drivers are going to be difficult to do that and as you say you know some of these things are not possible or ethical to do really you're never going to control all the variables you're not going to have you know uh people you know identical twins you know how can you do blind how can you do how can you do blindly Yeah Yeah well yeah exactly you know carrot-shaped steaks and um and uh but yeah you can't and and um you know and and it would be ethical too I mean how are you I mean animal nutrition is actually quite a robust field because you you can take 10 000 head of cattle that are you know genetically the same or similar and and expose them to to different environments keeping everything else constant and you can actually see the difference and um you can't do that with people you know yeah that's not that's not ethical to raise humans just for you know these experiments and have them go through their whole life and see what happens it would also take a really long time you know because humans live for a while at in proportion of other humans who are running the trial so you know it's not really uh feasible to do that as well and um and I think this goes back to you know what we were saying before is that you know we can sort of become a bit enamored with our own Brilliance and and fool ourselves into yeah yeah it's a simulation of realities yeah uh the simulation in in nutrition is impossible a good simulation is impossible so you're better off going to reality and going to your reality to your friends reality going to uh you know a good reported reality and this is anecdotes yeah so I think if as far as the nutrition anecdotes is a reliable anecdotes I mean you know that that's also you have to be careful about you know analyzing them anecdotical people uh lie lie to themselves they lie to others uh I have a problem with the Australian guy who insists that he can eat 60 protein and nothing happens to it so so this is an anecdote but really if you go and measure I would go and I would look very carefully at that statement and maybe maybe he doesn't need many calories so yes 60 of a thousand calories a day yeah you can eat protein in in a case 60 but anyway anecdotes also have to be examined in the reported the in a good way but in my opinion this is the this is the way to go look for good anecdotes yeah the um I I often quote um uh Richard Feinstein oh sorry Richard uh Feynman uh the physicist yeah yeah well he said that you know it doesn't matter how brilliant your theory is and it doesn't matter how smart you are if it doesn't agree with experiment it's wrong and that perfectly displays what you were talking about you know where you were trying to simulate reality but you're never going to simulate it perfectly you know you're never going to get the entire complexities of the world and certainly human life uh down to a t uh Einstein um obviously who Feynman worked with on the Manhattan Project he you know retirement here we have this theory of everything you could prove everything and all that sort of stuff I mean they were working on the idea that that our galaxy was the entirety of the universe because we didn't know there was anything more than that and if you had that sort of finite space Maybe maybe maybe you can you can figure something out obviously there's there's billions and trillions more galaxies out there and clusters of galaxies super clusters so you're really not going to figure all that out you're never going to get all the variables but what Einstein did he was still he still held to that principle whereas he's like I should if I can prove this mathematically we can look at that but then they would look and experiment and actually look at reality and look at the real world around them and if it didn't he would throw it out whereas you know other people say no no I proved it mathematically it has to be true because math is always true it's like well only if you're working with a full data set and you're not you never will be and especially if it's not lining up with reality so I think that's exactly to your point that you know you need to you need to actually just look at reality you know experiments are nice you know randomized control trials are great if they're done properly but that that's not a substitute for real life right right and the other thing is that they normally they report averages so I can assure you one thing you are not the average you are absolutely not the average you must be either above or below the average the average is just a number that nobody nobody had of the uh of the you know the population that we're examining yeah yeah so start to look at the spread of the data and you realize that the information is is useless in many cases I'm not saying I mean you know I'm talking a little bit the house here but maybe there are things that yes there are things that we can learn uh by the way most of the Paleo experiments were quite successful and again that's paleo with the bias against fit yeah because they took lorenco day book and said this is Paleo so right what do you call paleo that's another thing in nutrition what you call local what do you call paleo but the names that they give the things you know is also funny I mean this is yeah well I would call carnivore actual paleo you know because that's according to the actual data that's the real preview yeah exactly Carnival is the real failure yeah yeah yeah um yeah that's funny about averages I remember um who was it George Carlin the comedian he uh he he had a joke when he said that you know like you know the average IQ is you know is 100 and so if you think about it because it's an average half the people that you meet will be below average intelligence they're just like whoa yeah I guess that's right it's kind of funny to think about and um but uh you know just hopping back to something you said about protein you know saying I mean because that is something that that gets spoken about that if you have more than you know you know 35 40 percent of your calories from protein that this can this can cause a problem um and so you need to uh either substitute fat or or carbohydrates for the actual production of energy obviously is the difference between you know building up protein and and using it as as an energy source um but then something that was interesting you said if you're eating sort of lower calories like a thousand calories maybe you can eat more protein is it is that because there's more of a of a maximum you know grams of protein a day that is yeah I mean the body doesn't work by percentage Yeah Yeah so assuming that you consume about 2 500 calories that would be it would make it about 35 but it's really easy in terms of grams I would say and it also by the way depends on how much uh protein you use for structural needs right into your level of activity and how much you know exercise you do and all that stuff so I would say the limit is where is very close to four grams per kilogram okay I mean it could be 4.4 it can be 3.8 or whatever uh nobody nobody gets getting close to that yeah yeah that's huge yeah so I'm like yeah 105 so yeah over 400 grams of protein a day yeah yeah that's massive yeah yeah so for 60 kilos it's worth it so yeah 240 gram no 60 kilos yeah 240 grams yeah 240 grams is more than a kilo of meat so and very lean meat too yeah and very lean means well yeah like pure lean yeah right right right I mean you know how many people eat that no I mean I would I would eat you know over a kilo of meat and then you know sometimes on days I'm working out and like you know lifting heavily I might hit two kilos maybe a bit more uh but that's very fatty you know it's very fatty meat I'll get um yes certainly not lean it doesn't even taste good you know like very lean meat tastes good for a little bit and then it's just like ugh that's getting boring and I sort of think of that as much also by the way it's not something cute it's not like if you eat more in one day right yeah you die yeah yeah yeah I mean the the evidence uh that they have from you know Hunters that used to go this is why they call rabbit starvation yeah they used to feed on rabbits it took few few weeks to to get to a pathological situation yeah now that's a good point yeah um great so I would also I was going to ask you um and then um oh that was it I'm sorry I forgot my um my next question I'm sorry um no but I I was going to say too um you know some people say that you know because we've made some some changes in the last sort of you know 10 20 000 years that now we're just like a different species and then we should be eating all these other things that you know in your research into this you know do you think that would hold true or do you think that would be it'd be more optimal to to hold to you know what we were eating historically prior to uh you know the the Agricultural Revolution okay so my my position on that is that yes we went through some Evolution Evolution happens all the time as we speak uh he never stops so yes so you have I believe that we have more and more people that are getting more adapted to consuming uh large quantities of carbohydrates and even getting maybe a somehow to manage to absorb more or to to get along with the some poisons the the pro the problem with that and we did I mean take milk for example yeah some people are sensitive to milk some people are not fructose some people are more sensitive to fructose some people are not so there is a variety in the population and it's there always is I mean this is what moves evolution that there is the one of the conditions that there will be variability in the genes of the population but how many of us know whether we are sensitive uh to milk or whatever sensitive to uh you know to anything so we just don't know we know don't know unless we try it ourselves and also there some damage May accumulate over 20 30 years and you don't know about it and then it appears so auxilates all kind of stuff so we don't know that's why I treat paleo as a safety template and I I just forget about it we just don't know so let's be safe okay it costs for restriction but in my opinion is it pays yeah I guess that's a good point is that um you know whether or not you're you come from people that are a bit more adapted to something you know Carnival being a a safety catch but we know that's safe we know that's beneficial we know that that works for us and so you know maybe maybe you can get away with drinking coffee or doing something else but you know that that this is this is a safe starting point maybe you can venture out from there I mean I I don't want to venture out from there because uh you know I like feeling uh at my best but you know it's something that that you can at least use as a starting point and then and then Branch away from if you want to and see how it goes um and um yeah that's why I told you that I'm so adamant so we'll now from now on because now in New York yeah I tried not to be here okay yeah was I punished yeah yeah and so how do you feel now that you've gone just just pure crazy I mean it's absolutely fantastic fantastic another question I mean you forget about you forget about anything else you leave you you spend all your thinking uh to other things you just don't think about food and you don't think about uh you know eggs here and there you're just so alive and so feeling so wonderful wonderful yeah I know I mean it's not surprised to me I used to I used to be a carnivore and then I left it for a while and uh coming back now yeah I think some people uh your friends of mine that that you know went carnivore sort of around the time I did you know years ago um you know from from my influence they um you know they did for like a year and they felt great and they sort of slipped off of it usually because alcohol people like to drink and then they think like wow I'm gonna drink uh just just throw the whole thing out which of course you don't have to do you know you don't have to eat more poison just because you had some poison and um you know they always ask me is this like oh yeah still you'll still do that I'm like yeah absolutely I'm not going anywhere near that stuff again um and I I also you mentioned the um you know the mammal size and things dropping down that was something I thought was really interesting I saw one of your talks we were talking about how um the size of the average mammal sort of you know to jump back a bit you know increased uh sort of dramatically over several million years many many tens of millions of years and then all of a sudden there's just this sharp decline that sort of coincided with uh us starting to hunt these things yeah this is also something that I don't understand why other people didn't notice I mean you know you go to history history is is giving you like a perspective so that the ah if you go back 65 million years this is when they the dinosaurs became extinct so the mammals had room to evolve and so they became larger and larger and larger and larger and until about two and a half million years ago the average size of it of if you take all the species of mammals press your mums uh was about 500 kilos that was the average yeah elephants at that time used to weigh 12 tons today the way four five six tons so you have like two elephants in one elephant so that's how big they were yeah and it shouldn't surprise us because the world can tolerate that size if we go back to the dinosaurs themselves there were some huge animals there and I'm sure that if we had enough time left also mammals could grow to that side there are some advantages to being big but then today so it's 500 right it was 500 was 2.5 million today it's about 10. so what happens in two and a half million years that didn't happen in the 65 million years before that humans that's the main and we know that humans hunted large animals so why do I need to write papers about yeah yeah yeah the um yeah well I think that I think it's a good thing too coming from your background in economics is you were you know you didn't spend your whole career in Academia and Beyond in Paloma anthropology and and and and learning you know the boundaries of of of the known universe you know you came in from the outside and started asking different questions that people hadn't hadn't asked before is it is you know yeah I had some advantage in that in that in that sense that I didn't grow inside the the discipline yeah okay there's a reason they call it discipline uh yeah yeah I think there was um I think it may have been a time of soul but he was pointing out a similar phenomenon in in anthropology that a lot of people that made a lot of the the great sort of uh uh you know leaps and understanding you were were Layman novices or had nothing to do with archeology anthropology and they and they just sort of looked at it and just interested in and said oh and they had a different take on it and that is the definition of thinking outside the box because you you go to school and you get taught the box and this is this is the limit and the boundaries that you live in and you just live inside this box but these people are outside of this and they look at that from a different angle and they can see things in a more in a different way there's a good example to that uh you know the theory of tectonic plates Right Moving that theory was I don't know but really was the leader in the in introducing the theory it was a meteorologist he wasn't a geologist and for many years they mocked him until they found out that it was correct yeah yeah that's usually the way they you know you come up with a radical uh you know um you know radical thought and then and you get you're mocked and ridiculed by all the people that that whose research and and careers that would disrupt and then all of a sudden it's just like oh okay yeah no they're right and uh which is good it just sort of sort of shows you human nature as well as not being it's not being as as nice as it can like I said science is a is a yeah there's a lot of Sociology that you have to take into account when you look at science yeah well they say that science people make it people make it and people have you know people are not machines but in in science you are actually asked to become like a like a machine yeah and to be objective and to be weighing the evidence you know without any bias yeah forget it yeah that's what I say is um you know science advances one funeral at a time yeah you have this you know make a list in the in the uh it's absolutely correct yeah I could see it in there uh topology there was a scientist this was like a leader and he claimed that humans cannot be could not we are not smart enough to hunt they actually was scavengers and at that time he was like a leader so everybody started to write yeah humans were scavengers scavengers scavengers and they proved that human was scavengers and they wrote in the papers that now is the consensus is clear humans were scavengers yes and you know and now you look at today today it's not it's not it's not the common belief no common notion today is the humans were were predators I'm not I'm not the only one yeah they feel most like 99 of the people in the field will tell you that humans was smart enough to hunt in one of them came up and said look chimpanzees hunt yeah you know it had to remind them yeah yeah and it took him to retire for the sense to come back okay yeah I mean and yeah currently by the way I must say that he contributed a lot to archeology and to pay attention or anthropology yeah in a field he was he was a real genius well I mean that's the thing too is that you know you can't necessarily get everything right and uh or not not ever you know um not every time anyway and uh and because he had so much Credence and all the other things that he was doing he probably gave him you know that standing they said well I mean this guy's saying it you know it's probably true you know he he backs this stuff up and maybe he had good reasons do you want to publish and you want to publish oh boy it's a mess it's a big mess I don't want to go into it yeah but science is a big mess yeah it is yeah well that's the thing is when people have have their own personal interests to to protect as well and and you know my my brother-in-law did his um he was like a program from Google and did his PhD in computer science at MIT and I was a professor at the University of Washington Seattle and he did his PhD in um theoretical Quantum Computing so you know we don't have quantum computers yet but he was showing mathematically what we could do when we got them which we did you know so is quite a quite a a really you know far out there very you know intellectual field not many people are in it you know and as you would expect and so he was publishing these papers saying hey and challenging certain things saying hey you know you can look at this a little different way you can do these in these ways and he wrote these papers showing that and then showing that you know mathematically the the whole idea was basically that there's this part of a theoretical Quantum Computing that like basically need these big massive specific equations to to use and he his whole paper was arguing you don't need to use those you can do them like this and he he sent these things off for publication and it must have been like just the only guy uh you know doing a proofreading was was proof you know was doing the the peer review for every single Paper uh Journal because he kept getting these things back and it just it's just a note on it's just like you know for this sort of um uh Quantum Computing you need these kinds of equations I didn't see any of these equations in the paper therefore it's rejected it's like buddy if you read the paper it would have told you like it was arguing against doing that and so but this guy just like flipped through it like I don't see an equation here throw it out I mean what a jackass that guy is but you know but that's his that's his you're like nope this is it and and he is the gatekeeper you know he was a guy and that's how I did I built yeah I mean The Gatekeepers are uh you know holding the holding Department yeah that's it I mean I you know my the theory that I told you right now that uh you know why the brain grew yeah we published it in paper uh professor barkai and myself and uh it was interesting enough for some papers or some websites to go and ask the you know the people that are leading the field and the criticism was so weak and so poor uh it was just disappointing really but you know that one one criticism was oh the uh growth of the brain was not linear well who said it wrong [Laughter] what does that have to do with anything yeah I mean you're like yeah yeah well and and if it were linear that would maybe be less evidence of this you know so you have this this marked increase you know that means something changed and something something's happening yeah I mean you don't expect anything like that to be mirror this is crazy no no and yeah yeah who is this very dependent on the linearity yeah yeah I think I think that's that's that's so funny too because like you know so many times people will say things like that and it's just like they can just make these off-handed comments maybe that works in some circles when you point it out it's like okay and why does that matter and they're like [ __ ] you know I I would love to hear what they had to say about that like and and okay so go on you know what's the rest of your argument why does that why does that even why does that even matter I think a lot of times when when people discussing almost anything you know they they get so used to being in certain circles that they can just they can just say the same things over and over again and no one challenges them on it and then when someone just goes okay why does that matter all of a sudden they're like they they realize that they they haven't actually based it on much and it doesn't sound like they did either yeah yeah uh it's a I tell you it's difficult to get people to change their minds and it's difficult it's just difficult it's difficult for for scientists to change their mind although I tell you the most successful ones are one that are changing their mind very quickly the more flexible you are the more successful you are as a scientist in my opinion yeah you have to change you have to keep an open mind all the time yeah I think he's not afraid to be to say I mean the best archaeologist in Israel that I know is the one that like you said I think it tells us three times oh I was wrong I was wrong I was wrong you know yeah yeah you find something better then he made progress yeah well I commit I was wrong to ever eat lettuce that was wrong I'd never have done that and uh um can you tell me what um are you working in any projects now what sort of uh work you're doing these days or anything that's catching your interest ah I actually have two papers that I'm in the process of publishing not not I haven't submitted them yet because my partner didn't have time to look at it but but then there we go out ah one of them claimed that uh fire was first used and this is by the way Against The Economist in me the fires were first used as protection from predators and not to cook uh because cooking doesn't add that much uh energetic return as the you know protection for predation if you hunt the large animals and you sit on it you can sit on it for a month or a week or two weeks if some Predator comes around they're taking away you lost a lot of energy yeah and you don't gain that much energy from cooking uh tubers so that was one one paper and another one that also again try to prove that this declining prey size uh started many years ago and not just in the last 50 000 years we published one paper uh it was quite comprehensive and on the Levant on the area that that we live here which is a very good area for for archaeological studies because we have many sites and it is it is very narrow area and you see on on the way from Africa to Europe you almost must go through this area so there are many sites for many periods and we proved that the price size decline markedly so now I I'm trying to extend it and show that it happened in Africa and Europe as well and then I write a book uh I actually wrote a book 10. no 12 years ago and they actually told you about it it's the one that I when I wrote about the general implications of their hunter-gatherer being in a modern society so this is concerning anxiety and everything it mentally happened to us ah because we don't live anymore in a small group and we are dependent on people that don't know us and that we don't know so it brings a lot of stress into our lives so that was the book that I wrote in Hebrew 12 years ago so now I'm sort of translating it to English and I actually rewriting translating so half half and I will publish it I think I I won't bother with the going through publishers I will just do a Amazon uh what should we call it of publication sort of thing yeah yeah yeah yeah that's it and then then I have two other books that I want to to write a one both of them actually summarizing all the theory of human evolution that what I understood about human evolution which is good of course include the nutrition so I have enough projects to put me going for goodness how many years yeah so I need to eat only yeah that's it yeah stay on top of that carnivore yeah enough time to to do it yeah that's um that's really interesting about about the fire what did you what did you find that made you think that this was more of a started out more as a defensive I know that some people I've heard people talk about that that might be have been used even in hunting as well you sort of set fire to some grasses and that'll spook you know those mammoths over a cliff or something like that as well did you I don't even know how they proved that if it or that was just a theory but what what what um made you think about that well you see this is the main this was a major problem in human evolution is from when you get off the trees how do you protect yourself forget about the hunting how do you protect yourself on the on the ground we don't run fast uh we are we are we active during the day so we sleep at night uh how do you protect yourself and still you find primates uh even terrestrial primers like baboons but they sleep on trees and they go up to the high mountains to sleep so it's it's a major problem for a terrestrial animals to protect itself most of them don't sleep herbivores they just don't sleep during the night uh so ah and then you head to it the fact that you we hunt and there's nothing like a good uh characters in in the in the savannah to attract Predators yeah uh so the problem the problem doubles so the question was asked I was not the first one to ask it how do you protect ourselves how did we protect ourselves an obvious answer is by fire but Fire cost of course energy so you have to have a return on the energies that you expect and so like I told you that the return on the plants is one tenth death of animals so it's no brainer to think that the the fire was used to protect the prey rather than to cook you lose half the prey yeah uh you have to cook a lot a lot of tubers together yeah very good that was the idea yeah well I look forward to look forward to reading when it comes out and uh you know it's simple economics it's not there's nothing but my partner uh when he had this inside he said ah let's let's make a paper yeah we are well it's always good to get those thoughts out as well and I think that um you know you know just you have those ideas and it's you know it's a novel idea and it's and it's uh you know and you can you can back it up it's it's good to publish those sorts of things and just get more more uh uh you know discourse out there I mean I I think that uh you know I've you know been been remiss and not um you know doing things like that from from the thoughts that I've had and so I was trying to try and actually get on top of that and actually start publishing some of these things but um you know it can be difficult with uh with everything else I'm doing but uh yeah I think that it's uh good to do that and I think that's something I need to do as well so I'm glad you are um all right well and I thank you very much I think we've been talking for for nearly two hours now so I don't want to hog your entire day but thank you very much for coming on that was a very very interesting conversation I'm really glad that we got a chance to do it like a lot of success in your Spreading the News the good word yeah yeah exactly yeah and well thank you very much and and um where can people find you and follow you and and find your work I know I have two two blogs but one in April one in English they I'm not very active in them so yeah it's called paleo Style .com and that's it but then I I'm active a little bit on Twitter when I find some interesting something interesting some some interesting paper so bend or Mickey uh Twitter uh that's about it great we'll put those those links up in uh as well and anyone can go and look up uh your uh you know papers on on uh you know just even Google Scholars it is very easy right right I mean yeah yeah that's the thing is that you know people that want to read papers yeah at least read the abstract yeah yeah yeah and um and even uh even just YouTube you know I mean there's there's uh other things on there as well I think I came across one of your uh talks years ago before I I knew who you were I just happened to come across and I was like oh this guy's this guy's making sense and I think it was just um it was just called titled are we carnivores and it was like for ancestral yeah yeah and uh yeah and so uh so people can find that as well and uh great well Dr bandora thank you so much for coming on I I had a great time all right I hope to do it again soon thank you thanks [Music]