Interesting perspectives here. Playing devil's advocate, how does one explain those Greenland Inuit who were found to be 99% carnivore on average (meaning that some individuals must have been 100% carnivore), with only small amounts of summer berries eaten by some? Must we assume that they had low energy and strength? How did they find the energy to hunt whale? On the other hand, most Inuit in other areas were found to eat more plant foods than that.
Re dogs:- I believe that dogs can be fed on veg. Indeed, some extreme vegans force their dogs to eat only vegan or vegeterian meals. It's only cats who are obligate carnivores.
Re "Paleophil":- Out of curiosity, are you also the "Paleophil" on the paleofood list?
Re pemmican:- Well, I've never felt the need to eat pemmican. Pemmican, after all, isn't a raw food, so it's only really seen as a possibility for those raw, zero-carbers who refuse to eat any carbs at all, and who find themselves in a situation where they can't find decent equivalent raw food sources. Most RAFers, instead, find that eating amounts of raw carbs(like raw fruit), during times of meat-scarcity, is a far better alternative to eating cooked-animal-food as the latter generally gives detox-reactions(eg:- a hangover-like effect) once consumed, while eating raw fruit does no such harm(at least not to raw low-carbers).
While I haven't bothered to try pemmican, partly due to rather negative reactions to cooked-foods and partly due to the excessive waste of time involved in preparing any cooked-/processed foods, I have gone in for eating heated suet(as a taste-experiment) , some years ago while attempting zero-carb. The effects were disastrous, and made me realise that cooked-animal-fat is something my body finds highly toxic(however 100% grassfed/organic it may be), more toxic, indeed, than cooked lean meat or even cooked carbs. So heated animal fats are not a solution for me re increasing physical activity, quite the opposite.
(I've done some experiments when walking in the Alps, with a sort of equivalent "raw pemmican"(ie nothing processed, just carrying with me some lean-meats mixed in with raw marrow or suet. of course, the stuff would rapidly rot due to the meat but I'd consume it mostly or wholly within 5 days, regardless. Inevitably, by the 3rd day, I would be utterly exhausted, with no stamina, and no amount of the lean-meat/fat mixture would help re increasing endurance. I'd end up looking ridiculous and having to rest constantly for 5 minutes each time while other hikers sauntereed past me).
Other points re pemmican:- Not only does high heat have to be used on pemmican in order to preserve it for ages, which casues an increased level of heat-created toxins to appear, but, any foods, even raw foods, that are stored for very long periods tend to develop oxidisation(oxidised fats are very toxic) and rancidity etc.. Now, sealing pemmican in vacuum-packs and freezing it can prevent(or slow down?) the rancidity and the oxidation, but the issue of heat-created toxins still remains. Plus, the whole raison-d'etre of raw-foodism is to eat foods in fresh form. As someone else pointed out on another forum, pemmican is no different from much of the cooked/processed junk-food that's designed by supermarkets to last for months/years on the shelves. It;'s the same princicple involved:- lowering the quality of the food so as to extend its storage-life.
re the above point re oxidation(taken from other group):-
> And if you're concerned about the possibility of cancer (as we all
> should be in this toxic world we've created for ourselves), here's a
> quote from the Summary of Holistic Cancer Therapy in "Overcoming
> Cancer" by Walter Last:
>
>
>
> "Furthermore, [in cancer] there is commonly a deterioration in the
> lipid (fat-related) composition of the cell walls that allows toxins
> to enter the cells, and prevents waste residue from being removed. The
> main cause of this deterioration is the habitual consumption of heated
> or oxidized fats, and a deficiency of omega-3 fatty acids as in fish
> oils and linseed oil [and, he should have added, in grassfed animal
> fat]."
Re Inuit:- Well, it depends on the source and who you believe, I guess. If I were to believe Michael from the RAV-Food list, he's an anti-PUFA campaigner who believes that the Inuit were afflicted with rapid aging as a result of their diet(he refers to Stefansson's well-known comment in the fat of the land boook etc., about how the Inuit he saw aged much faster than people on standard(lower-PUFA diets)). He was more concerned with the PUFA issue, but it could always have been the zero-carbs which were at fault.
Another point is that the Inuit are following diets quite unlike what the vast majority of (raw or cooked) zero-carbers are doing. The Inuit(on traditional diets), after all, eat vast amounts of seafood, raw or cooked, including plenty of aged meats and a variety of organ-meats, yet most zero-carbers don't seem to value either aged meat , let alone seafood, they just concentrate on fatty muscle-meats and water, for the most part, which is not very much like the Inuit diet of rotting whalemeat, seal-blubber etc.
Also, it's been claimed by some scientists that the Inuit have specially adapted, on a genetic level, to zero-carb diets over many generations, so that they're less affected than people who start them only later in life etc.. This makes some sense if you've read about the science of "epigenetics" which has shown how smoking by a grandfather can, for instance, influence the gene-expression of their grandchildren etc.
