Owsley and his dietary fantasies

     Owsley Stanley was allegedly a major LSD chemist, producer, and distributor during the '60's.
     I say "allegedly" because synthesizing, purifying, and handling LSD is quite difficult, highly complex, and requires technical information, sophisticated laboratory equipment, chemical reagents, and laboratory expertise not readily available to the casual kitchen chemist.  Given his bizarre lack of understanding of even the simplest scientific concepts, amply demonstrated in his essay, in addition to his profound lack of logic, both readily seen in this critique, it seems much more likely that he was merely a front man for the real chemists, who shrewdly remained anonymous.
     Put simply, Owsley was no Hoffmann, Schultes, Shulgin, Osmond, Stolaroff, Hollingshead, Ott, Grof, or even a Mason,  McKenna, or Pinchbeck.  He was more of a Leary: bombastic, megalomaniacal, and charismatic.

OS> Diet and Exercise
One of the problems of modern living is the way in which we have departed from the things we did as we evolved. Diet is one of those things, and I believe that diet and the lack of the right exercise are the main reasons for the widespead prevalence of obesity, diabetes and heart disease.
     This is true, but but unfortunately OS> does not have the minimal scientific comprehension to know that the human species is a frugivorous ape, with a genetic code 98.4% identical to the chimp, our closest genetic relative.  Obviously, most of that difference is reflected in the differences in physiology, not inherent digestive biochemistry.  Thus, the proper diet for our species is that of the chimp.
     As humans evolved in the tropics, where the chimps have "shrewdly" remained, it is obvious that any diet based on animal flesh and cooking is total foreign to our evolutionary physiology and biochemistry, and merely the fantasy of the ill-informed.

OS> I have always liked meat the best of all foods, and as a child I never wanted to eat my vegetables, other than the usual starchy things like bread and potatoes.
     It is instructive to point out three critical facts at this point: OS> does not supply any scientific references to support his views, he knows nothing about basic 8th grade science, and his lifelong dietary preferences were rigidly adopted due to only "likes" and "wants" of an uneducated "child".

OS> As I grew out of my teens my weight suddenly shot up from 125 pounds to 186 in about six months.
     Does not this prove the fundamental error of his dietary choices?
     Gaining 10 pounds per month should have been a clear warning sign of his wrong dietary choices and indication of his future disastrous path, but he did not heed the warning.

OS> I was out on my own and trying to eat on the cheap, which naturally resulted in a rather carbohydrate-rich diet.
     So, his dietary choices were not based on any rational analysis or science, but by "trying to eat on the cheap"; not a wise move.

OS> I once tried vegetarianism for about 6 months, but I felt like my body was dying, so I abandoned that trip.
     There are an infinite number of "vegetarian diets"; most of which, as OS> proved are inadequate, especially without the proper scientific and nutritional insight.  Like most 'vegetarian failures', OS> prefers to blame the always-unspecified "diet" instead of his own profound ignorance.

OS> I was absolutely freaked at the sight of my stomach lying on the bed next to me. I went on restricted calories and lost weight down to about 150, but it was very difficult to get below that.
     Difficult, only for the ignorant.

OS> When I became interested in ballet, and started to take classes, I found the extra weight a liability, but was unable to lose and still eat enough to have the energy for the strenuous exertions of ballet. I think that there are very few types of athletic activities with the demands of ballet training.
     Thus proving that exercise does not help one lose weight.

OS> One day I picked up a magazine, since defunct, called Collier's, and there was an article about a way to control one's weight through diet, and the diet was one high in fat and low in carbs.
     Next, his dietary expertise shifts from irrational "likes" and "wants" of an uneducated "child" to mindless propaganda of mass-market magazines.  Clearly, not much of an improvement.

OS> The article was a review of a book titled Eat Fat and Grow Slim by an English physician, Dr. Richard Macarness.
    Actually, Richard Mackarness.  And here is his book.

OS> I was able to locate a copy of the book and found the theory sounded right, ...
     Actually, there is no theory.  "In science, a theory is a mathematical or logical explanation, or a testable model of the manner of interaction of a set of natural phenomena, capable of predicting future occurrences or observations of the same kind, and capable of being tested through experiment or otherwise falsified through empirical observation."  Since cooked human diets are NOT a natural phenomena, they, like social phenomena, are outside the realm of true science.

OS> ... as I had always felt that veggies, which are almost entirely carbohydrates, ...
     OS> substitutes his "feelings" for real science, a profoundly dumb decision.
     And, vegetables are not "almost entirely carbohydrates"

     NOTE: those foods with the most carbohydrate are roots and grains, NOT vegetables, as OS> falsely asserts without any support.

     (For a handy, free, nutritional database program (for Windoze or Linux) that I helped Jerry Story develop, get DMAK.  That's where I got the above information; the data itself is from the USDA Nutrient Database.)

     So, with a handy tool called: facts, we see that not only are vegetables NOT "almost entirely carbohydrates", none have more than 10% carbohydrates, and even starchy grains and roots are NOT "almost entirely carbohydrates".
     Clearly, OS> is more concerned with spreading erroneous food propaganda than factual information.

OS> ... weren't really food, at least not in the sense that meat was. As a kid I had the idea that we ate veggies because meat was expensive and rationed (which it was during the war).
     And, in what sense is "meat" really food?  No support for this outrageous, and erroneous, statement, as usual.
     "Meat" is a prepared commercial product; cut and trimmed muscles of factory-slaughtered animals.  IF animals were a "real food" for our species, we would have a controlling instinct to eat it in the same manner as all the natural flesh-eating species. that is: kill the animal with our natural physiological equipment, tear it asunder with our natural physiological equipment, and eat it raw.  There would be no "need" for slaughtering, butchery, cooking, and strong spices, condiments, and other flavor-manipulating chemicals to be added to disguise the grizzly origin of the alleged "real food". yet, OS> and other "meat"-eaters do NOT follow the natural order of behavior of the other flesh-eating species.  Why?  
     Humans have a strong instinct NOT to do so.  I have been challenging culturally-conditioned "meat-eaters" for ~38 years to prove that animals are a "natural food" for us, as they claim, to kill a small animal with their bare hands, tear it apart, and eat it raw to prove their point; and, guess what, NONE have taken the challenge. while all along insisting that they are natural "meat"-eaters.

OS> Eat Fat and Grow Slim had as its basis the writings of an arctic explorer and anthropologist Vilhalmur Stefansson.
     Anthro-apologist?

OS> Macarness was also familiar with the traditional "cure" for diabetes, which was to place the patient on a diet with virtually no carbohydrates. If there are no carbs in the diet, the body doesn't need the ability to make insulin, so the disease was no bother (other than the discomfort of the dietary discipline)
    Why would the 'natural diet' for any species produce "discomfort of the dietary discipline"? .

OS> Since we did not evolve eating carbs in the modern constant-intake fashion, our pancreas is subject to failure from over work, and perhaps it is sometimes destroyed by our own immune system due to the damage the constant flow of insulin does to the blood vessels.
     Finally, a real fact.  Grains, the major source of cooked cultural-diet carbohydrates, were developed rather recently (about a mere 10,000 years ago) by humans; they are NOT natural plants.  Thus, clearly, humans did NOT "evolve" with them as a dietary item.

OS> ... this basic meat diet and getting phenomenal results in rapid weight reduction.
   OS>'s focus was/is on weight reduction, certainly NOT health.  
     So, instead of consuming a rational human diet to support healthy bodyweight, he falls into the trap of a severe-animal-centric trick diet that DOES cause weight loss, but also at the expense of permanent loss of health.

OS> The nice thing about this diet is that the human body does not seem to be able to store fat that is eaten in the food, ...
     Thus, indicating it was not properly metabolized.

OS> (Guess where most of this fatty acid winds up!)
    Being expelled in the breath as ketone bodies?

OS> The meat diet in its purest form is similar to the diet of the stone age Eskimo, and contains no vegetables at all.
     Well, from a US Census of Population report dated 1950 (the most recent I could find) the median age of these groups was a mere 17.8 years.  By contrast, on a horribly health-destroying SAD, that results in 64.5% of the US population being "overweight" (the second leading cause of unnecessary deaths), the current US median age is 35.5 years (from a 2000 US census).
     So, Eskimos are considerably less healthy than sick Americans.

OS> That this is a healthy diet is not in dispute ...
     Oh?

OS> I have eaten this way for 39 years, perhaps not all those years as strictly as I should have, but my body is very much like it was when I was 30, about 2 inches thicker in the waist, but I don't have the kind of body that others my age have.
     Thus, he has put on unhealthy weight; contrasting that to victims of the current obesity fad is intentionally misleading.

OS> One of the things which we as hunters/carnivores have as a very real lifestyle requirement, is a high degree of physical activity.
     There is NO scientific evidence that humans ARE "hunters/carnivores"; humans have been culturally-conditioned to DO these activities.  There are NO instincts to do so.  
     There is a major difference between the verbs "to be" and "to do".  (Check with your local 3rd grader for help, here.)  Unfortunately, anthro-apologists uniformly fail to comprehend this important difference, either, and embarrass themselves accordingly.
     The "being" is a function of our inherent biochemistry, which is strictly controlled by our genetic code, the "doing" is nothing but local cultural conditioning, which varies bizarrely from local tribe to tribe.

OS> Today many people do not continue a good exercise routine past teenage years.
     Teens have a "good exercise routine"?  "The percent of children and teens who are overweight also continues to increase. Among children and teens ages 6-19, 15 percent (almost 9 million) are overweight according to the 1999-2000 data, or TRIPLE what the proportion was in 1980."

OS> Almost all kids are almost excessively active, it is the natural thing to do, you must learn to be lazy, and I assure you the societal pressures are there to do just that.
     Children, whose parents are dumb enough to feed them sugar and caffeine ("soft drinks", "mineral water, ...) create such hyperactivity.

OS> Then there were the guys who for some indecipherable reason were convinced that you couldn't possibly grow any muscles if you didn't eat a lot of carbs (they were fat, of course - well muscled, but fat).
     Worse, the muscle-heads also tend to believe that one must eat lots of protein.

OS> When I started to grow more muscles than I had ever in my life had, ...
    Surprise, they may grow in size, but certainly NOT more of them.

OS> I cannot understand why a muscle, which is almost purely protein, ...
     Animal muscles are ~ 17% protein, at least in the store, sold as "meat".  "Mostly" means > 50%.  "Almost all" is non-quantitative and thus meaningless.

OS> ... should need carbohydrates to grow, and in fact it doesn't.
     Blood sugar, a carbohydrate, is the source of cellular energy.

OS> It does, however need fats, so if there isn't enough of them you are in trouble.
     The chimp diet, that of our closest genetic cousins, contains little fat, since it is predominately fruits and occasional leaves during fruit off-seasons.

     So, what are the effects of his "eaten this way for 39 years"?

     "... seven weeks of maximum radiation treatment for throat cancer. Having lost one of his vocal cords, he speaks only in a whispered croak these days. At one point, he was reduced to injecting his puree of steak and espresso directly into his stomach."
     "His heart attack several years ago had nothing to do with his strict regimen, according to Bear, but more likely the result of some poisonous broccoli his mother made him eat as a youth."
     Perhaps, he is also experiencing the psychological effects of a high fat diet, and is possibly developing other well-documented effects of "meat" and dairy eating. (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)

     OS> ""There is only one true, inevitable, and defining characteristic which is connected with vegetarians, and that is: They ALL are compulsive liars."
     After demonstrating the above propagandistic lies by OS> issued without the slightest bit of support other than his psychopathic ego, one must wonder how he determined this revelation; did he interview "ALL" vegetarians worldwide?

     The International Vegetarian Union (IVU) provides the following estimates:

     So, perhaps OS> interviewed well over 10 million people to carefully determine who were "ALL compulsive liars".  
     That's quite a task, even for a megalomaniac.  Go Owsley!