There is video of the, what was it, McGovern hearing or some name like that, I can't remember, but you can watch Robert Lustig who has spoken a lot about this.

Well what quantities are you saying? I guess an implicit thing is that fat is very satiating. So "eat as much as you want" doesn't lead to overdoing it. I eat lots compared to a "low fat" diet, but I don't put on weight.

Also they are rethinking the cholesterol. The link between what you eat and the cholesterol in the blood is weak, and cholesterol rushes to the scene of damage in an artery, but it doesn't cause the damage. I don't know, just saying this is unresolved stuff.

It is also called "ancestral health" because you're interested in what people thrive on, not just what the guys stuck in a drought with nothing walking left to eat can obtain just to stay alive day to day.

They aren't banned. Paleo "hacks" are often experimenting with figuring out how much of which kinds of tubers and carbs may be beneficial.

What is banned is consuming the large quantities of carbs that the average person eats.

And yes they would have eaten chocolate cake if they could obtain it. In the absence of chocolate cake, there are Africans today who get into a little raft and paddle around in the dark trying to catch crocodiles.

Well I said "good natural fats" and this seems to be a big part of the whole low carb, banting, primal, paleo movement's message.

AFAIK, good fats here means omega 3, fish oil fats, coconut oil, macadamia nuts, grassfed animal fat, more coconut oil, grassfed butter, grassfed cream, etc.

The first point seems to be, fat is not bad, because that's a big part of the ordinary public message, "fat baaad! fat make you faaat! fat give u um chest pain!" and that's pretty much wrong, actually lots of fats protect the body.

Once people are over that fat-bad message, and aren't counting calories and thinking that they will stay healthy by eating the potato but skipping the bit of butter on top, then there is a long list of stuff regarding good fats, and knowing the difference between crap fried in crap, and good grass-fed butter and cream and animal fats and egg yolks.

But I only started down this path late in life so if I drop dead with a heart attack anyway, there is no way for me to know now what caused it. But eating good fats, lots of good fats, and generally for what it is worth, finding I feel so much better for it, is as much as I have to go on.

Same here. Tried it and found it works really well. Closer to hunter gatherer ancestors 300,000 years ago who ran down a large animal and then ate practically the whole thing, supplemented with berries and tubers or whatever. Lots of meat, lots and lots of fat, very little carbs.

Actually, it was the right balance of carbs, as was found before agriculture, and later, the vast industrialised agribusiness, made carbs so cheap you could fill half the plate with them, and then a long advertising campaign convinced everyone that this was the "right balance".

You only have to do low carb for about 3 days to realise what a massive public health shot in the foot we've had. And that's before we even get into any of the various other chronic conditions people may be suffering due to a unnaturally high carb diet combined with an unnaturally low fat intake.

Also known as Banting.

The LCHF Paleo Primal Banting community, the people who have been reading Taubes' review of the literature going back pre-war, and so on, and who have tried this stuff for themselves, the basic insight is that it is the carbohydrates that are the problem.

The grain growers wanted to mass produce and sell the stuff, and some politicians liked a "heart healthy" message (despite scientists protesting that more research was needed before jumping to conclusions) and so the whole "heart healthy" movement was born, which emphasised high carb foods like cereals, by demonising fat.

Well after some decades, and people trying it for themselves, people are now realising that it was pretty much completely wrong. And manufacturers, because fatless food tastes of cardboard, knew they had to increase the sugar content to make up for the lack of taste. Low fat yoghurts loaded with sugar. Healthy smoothies, loaded with sugar.

The carbs create cravings, signal the body to store fat, and overwork your insulin production until it breaks.

But dietary fat? Good natural fats are good for you. They are good for the guts, the heart, and the brain. Well, you can read books and various docs on this, and try it for yourself. See if their claims seem to work out. It isn't a short term diet, it is a lifestyle.

Interesting, I oft wonder that the future of the world is going to be about China and India, both making a huge transition into modern urbanised industrialised powers. India seems very chaotic, whereas China worries more about social order. Or at least that's the view from the West. Also, I got the impression China thinks on the time span of civilisations. Like, China is watching the West and making notes and still wondering how it'll turn out for us. Plus the West has monotheistic cultural origins, whilst China is philosophically different. China has been investing a lot in Africa, building infrastructure. Africa is where most of the future population growth will come from, and also the vast continent where, in Spiral Dynamics terms, there are still the most wide ranging levels of cultural organisation to move through. China's notion of social order and progress could really turn out interesting there. So USA did China a favour nuking Japan? And I gather USA also had a pretty serious cultural change programme to get rid of all the Japanese fascistic imperialistic elements?

Yes well the "spiral" reflects that things can move "up" (serfs become smarter and more empowered, thus moving things up to democracy) but things can also fall apart and move "down" (a fascist group gets power, perhaps they are voted in like the Nazis).

So what Machiavelli says, that democracy can devolve, is true. What wouldn't have existed at his time though, is any system that was higher than democracy, or at least, any system where the people were even smarter and could continue to develop democracy, rather than let it stagnate and fall apart.

If history was truly cyclical, we'd all still be hunter gatherers mostly, we'd keep going back to that, yet somehow, over history, some new systems appear.

It is a bit like building a tower, you keep adding floors until it falls down. Then you start again using whatever you learnt from the last collapse. Gradually you work out what's needed for each level to become stable.

It is interesting to wonder what the SD meme colour coded/named turquise will look like, but that may be far in the future. Something always stuck in my mind was what Wilber wrote, perhaps even back in Up From Eden, that the biggest change and advance for humanity and the planet would be if everyone simply grew to having a mature modern ego. Where our sense of winning in life, is about doing something worthwhile so that we can get respect for our contribution, and likewise respect others for their contributions. But if 70% of the world still resonates more with raw power, survival, empire building, ethnic cleansing, and people are unable to see outside their own cultural norms, then yeah, scary.

As for testing people, I heard vaguely they wanted to do that at Intergal Institute, but Cook-Greuter said it would be unethical. Ther are some really tricky issues I think, trying to see how to reintroduce systems that work into diversity, yellow after green, without becoming a bit nazi about it :-D

I don't know what really matters behind the scenes. But whilst they are standing and speaking, then this about resonating with people's values can matter. I am still wondering to this day what was the real reason for the Iraq invasion. I mean the really real reason.

Regards China, can I ask, there were some documentaries that China of late is becoming more passionate about nationalism, is that true?

There is a theory, used in South Africa to help ease the transition away from Apartheid, called Spiral Dynamics. It models human development as going through about 6 worldwiews, each with their own sense of morality/justice/values. It spans history, so the first worldview is of a hunter gatherer. The most recent worldview is of an educated Western post-modern cultural relative intellectual interested in minority rights and the environment. Anyway, between those two worldviews you have the view of warlords, then the view of religious-empire-order, and then the view of individualistic achievement/playing to win in a competitive world individualism. That last one by the way was the start of modernity and freedom in the French revolution sense of the word, it recognises that EVERY human is equal and has their won brain and is an equal player and should not be oppressed by religious-empire-orders (Communism is similar in that it is also a single empire order which oppresses individual freedom and ingenuity).

OK so, this relates to politics because the politicians do, as you say, simply have to FRAME a proposal in language which RESONATES with the worldview of the people being targeted. The point is that when you are born, you are basically at the hunter-gatherer level. Culturally and intellectually and morally you then grow up and somewhere along the way, tend to stop or focus on one of the worldview levels. If you are currently living in a Nigerian bad land, you're probably hovering around warlordism. That's fine, that's just the most appropriate adaption to your environment. A pomo sensitive type will merely become a target in that environment. So whatever level people are at, that's just the best they can manage. Anyway, Spiral Dynamics might not be 100% true, but it is a useful distilling of some of the major differences.

So yes, the tradition-valuing, we are one nation, one flag, NCIS TV show committed marine of honour and purpose, holy order type worldview is about half of America, I forget the exact percentage they estimate, and so anything that speaks about being a responsible individual who self-sacrifices their own selfish needs for the sake of serving the lager community, any issue framed in that way, will gain a lot of voter approval. People like W. Bush, Al Gore, and Hilary Clinton know all about Spiral Dynamics and such theories (various institutes and advisors etc.) and it is anybody's guess how much they are using them.

Where it gets "religious" is where researchers amongst themselves discuss the uncertainties in carefully considered scientific language, and then decide that these nuances are too complex for the public to understand, so they decide that the public message needs to simplify the message because otherwise, the public might fail to act, so they figure, if they lead the public to failing to act, they would be "unethical", likewise, letting any "denier" get access to data which they might seize upon to highlight uncertainty, thus leading the public to ignore the problem would also be "unethical", so they opt to promote an image of ever greater confidence, ever increasing certainty, worse than we thought, a science field that is always improving, always painting a clearer and clearer picture, where there are no "paradigms", just ever-building on more and more knowledge.

But the problem is, ethics is not a science topic. If you are making an ethical decision on behalf of others, there is some ethical imperative that you ask them whether __they__ think it is ethical. It isn't just about democracy, but about an OPEN society where we know all views are fallible, all views are limited by our own perceptual ability and bias, so we don't go round making decisions for others without them knowing, because it is quite likely that despite our own best intentions, our purest and smartest of ideals and knowledge, our perceptions are in error, and hiding those decisions and ethical judgments from the public only means it takes far longer for the problems to be corrected.

We trust science because it is self correcting. If it stops being self correcting, or that self correction is delayed by say, 50 years, there is no reason to trust it. The AGW stuff is doing some rather extensive damage, unfortunately.

Pinker's The Better Angels of our Nature mentioned some research: they sent a job application letter to employers, the letter said something like, "... one more thing, I feel you should know that I once committed a murder. The situation was that I was in a bar, and a guy wouldn't stop so we took it outside, and suddenly he had a knife, and I defended myself." They reported that employers in the south of USA were sympathetic to him and even invited him to pop in if he was even in town. In the north of USA, they were not sympathetic. A second letter, where the story was that "I stole a car, blah, because I was poor" got sympathy in the north, and none in the south. The researchers also note that the murder rate goes down the further north you go, even before you actually cross into Canada. So yes, people kill people, the gun helps, but a man's code of honour which says he should stand his ground, really helps.

It is like comparing Switzerland and Pakistan. Real men don't compromise, and a bloodbath ensues.

You should't be required to answer the phone then either.