My take on macros...

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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26-35 percent ....... (30.5%)
Most plant food energy being carbohydrate, so nu is that so far away from the 'base' paleo ratio of 1/3 all the way round?
The 56-65% animal protein being roughly half protein half fat....

I can't see how that is any different from what i have been saying, and obviously taking into account seasonal factors carbohydrate intake increases in the summer and obviously the ratios will swing in favour of fat/protein in the winter, although it should be noted that calories overall will be less.

Depends on what exactly you are referring to. I thought the thrust of the thread was that we should have an equal contribution from all three macronutrients in the diet? For instance the 26-35% in the Cordain paper refers to total contribution from plant foods not the macronutrient carbohydrate. Now, the actual carbohydrate content of those plant foods won't equate to 35% because plants contain very little usable carbohydrate by weight.

Since carbohydrates have just 4 kcals per gram, the contribution to total calories from carbohydrates in plant foods will not be equal to the contribution from fats in animal foods because fats have more than twice the calories per gram. Ergo, if following a strict paleolithic diet, it will not contain an equal proportion of carbohydrates, either by weight or by calories [which is the most pertinent measurement], as fat - so it must be a higher fat, lower carb diet and have an unequal macronutrient ratio.

You can only have an equal contribution macronutrients if you consume concentrated sources of carbs like grains and sugars, as in the modern western diet. If I was to prepare a meal of roast chicken breast with cauliflower, broccoli and sprouts - making sure that the total weight of the vegetables was equal to the weight of the chicken [say 100g chicken breast and 33.3g of each vegetable] - then the calorie values would not be equal:

TOTAL FOR MEAL: P=33.27g [133.08 kcals]/F=4.03g [36.27 kcals]/C=6.12g [24.48 kcals]

MACRO % RATIO [BY CALORIES] 69/19/13 [P/F/C]
Percentage of calories is the only value that counts because it rules out non-nutritive 'bulking' factors in foods like water and fibre.

So it is still not balanced. In order to balance it I would have to add 13.5g of butter and increase the vegetables to 159g of cauliflower, 105g of broccoli and 100g of sprouts making a total vegetable quantity of 364g! A hefty serving of veg just to balance the macros for 100g of chicken breast. If you scale that up for a daily 3000 kcal 'paleo' based diet you will see that trying to maintain an even ratio between all three macros will entail eating around two and three quarter kilos of veg!

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I presume, from the way it is written, that the percentages are provided energy rather than food mass.
Mabye nu could clear this up?

Just seen this. You are right, that actual quote seems to suggest energy which would indicate the total kilocalories from plant foods. However, when he tabulates the various study findings for hunter-gatherer intakes around the world it merely sates % animal foods and % plant foods without stating a precise unit of measurement. I will go through the whole paper again to see if it is made any clearer and let you know!

OK. I've just read through the paper again and RC is correct, it does state at least 65% energy from animal foods and up to 35% energy from plant foods [which can also contain a small energy contribution from protein and fat]. However, if you do the math and leave out non-paleo high starch and sugar foods, you would still have to eat a huge amount of veggies to accomplish a third of your energy intake from carbohydrates. If you go by what is comfortable to eat you would naturally gravitate to a lower contribution from carbs and a higher contribution from both fat and protein. Also Cordain is talking 'subsistance' intakes in his paper rather than the three and four thousand calorie diets that people here are likely to consume in a day. A 1000 kcal contribution from carbs via veggies is an awful lot of veggies!

[Ripped Barbarian]

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Depends on what exactly you are referring to. I thought the thrust of the thread was that we should have an equal contribution from all three macronutrients in the diet? For instance the 26-35% in the Cordain paper refers to total contribution from plant foods not the macronutrient carbohydrate. Now, the actual carbohydrate content of those plant foods won't equate to 35% because plants contain very little usable carbohydrate by weight.

Where does it state that is is food mass, dry mass or anything else and not energy? it wasn't specific as far as i could see, sorry if i missed it.

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You can only have an equal contribution macronutrients if you consume concentrated sources of carbs like grains and sugars, as in the modern western diet. If I was to prepare a meal of roast chicken breast with cauliflower, broccoli and sprouts - making sure that the total weight of the vegetables was equal to the weight of the chicken [say 100g chicken breast and 33.3g of each vegetable] - then the calorie values would not be equal:

I have no idea why you have said that, it's just not true!
It might be damn hard in the winter in certain areas of the world but certainly 6 months of the year could easily be 33.3% carbs from a paleo diet.
-Berries, chestnuts, sea kale tuber, roots etc
I go out and actually do survival practice and you'd be suprised the amount of carbohydrate foods you come to rely upon, and it's not oat cakes stashed in my bag!
Certainly in the summer i was having MASSES of carbohydrate from berries, i could EASILY pick several kilos of berries in an afternoon off work, now 2 kilos of blackberries is about 1500calories and i could easily eat more than that....imagine what our ancestors could have done with the whole day designated to feeding? especially as there was a lot more plant coverage of different types, it's just a matter of browsing.

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In order to balance it I would have to add 13.5g of butter and increase the vegetables to 159g of cauliflower, 105g of broccoli and 100g of sprouts making a total vegetable quantity of 364g! A hefty serving of veg just to balance the macros for 100g of chicken breast. If you scale that up for a daily 3000 kcal 'paleo' based diet you will see that trying to maintain an even ratio between all three macros will entail eating around two and three quarter kilos of veg!

If you base it on low calorie greens then yes but much of our ancestors carbohydrate intake was from roots, chestnuts and the like which are higher energy density.

Also my overall point is that i never said we should all be eating exactly 1/3 of each macro, as obviously that is wrong as different people have different needs, what i was saying that going on a 'paleo diet' and JUST eating meat and cream is not the way of a paleo diet!

EDIT: I think it is very important to cut in with another point here and that is paleo type carbohydrates are very hard to buy in the supermarket, it's all geared towards grains!
I guess you could use sweet potatoes instead of 'true paleo roots' but they have been selectively bred and the like, but obviously a complete paleo diet isn't physically possible today so you do have to make some shortcuts here and there, slight reduction in healthy mabye but hey, you've got to balance that with the pro's of modern life!

A brief 'paleo carbs' list:

-Honey (obviously a rare delicacy!)
-Roots, bulbs and tubers (there's quite a few, most you wouldn't realise are edible!)
-Berries and other fruits in summer.
-Chestnuts and other types of nuts
-A few grains (early man collected and milled a few grains but couldn't exactly bake a bloomer!)
-Tree saps (not maple syrup! that's too concentrated!)

But obviously nothing compared to 'western diet' carb intake which is grain, cane sugar and selectively bred super sweet fruit based!

It's also important to note that most carb sources are 'tick over' or 'collect up into a small meal' in frequency, they would not have been consumed in huge amounts like meat, and meat would not have been consumed on a 'tick over' of 'tupperware' basis.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

Well, I have never said to eat a zero carb diet! And if you can fudge the paleo diet by eating sweet potatoes, oats or bananas as a form of carbs, I don't see why you can't have dairy like butter or cream for the fats! We have to eat meat, poultry and fish that paleolithic hunters would not have had access to and we don't have access to their game as a lot of it is extinct or has evolved/been domesticated into entirely different animals. Paleo is a dietary principle rather than a specific list of foods [just no post agricultural foods like grains, refined sugars and potatoes!]. Similarly we don't have many of the paleo fruits and vegetables still in existence; most modern cultivars are higher in sugars and starches than the original wild plants. I just think if you eat naturally to those principles the likelihood of the macros being evenly distributed in the diet are remote!

Don't forget that things like nuts and seeds are also high in protein and fats, so if you consume these as a concentrated form of carbs you will also be adding to the ratio of protein and fats, so I still doubt you could keep an even macro ratio going without a lot of measuring and manipulation and using processed foods.

[Ripped Barbarian]

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Well, I have never said to eat a zero carb diet! And if you can fudge the paleo diet by eating sweet potatoes, oats or bananas as a form of carbs, I don't see why you can't have dairy like butter or cream for the fats! We have to eat meat, poultry and fish that paleolithic hunters would not have had access to and we don't have access to their game as a lot of it is extinct or has evolved/been domesticated into entirely different animals. Paleo is a dietary principle rather than a specific list of foods [just no post agricultural foods like grains, refined sugars and potatoes!]. Similarly we don't have many of the paleo fruits and vegetables still in existence; most modern cultivars are higher in sugars and starches than the original wild plants. I just think if you eat naturally to those principles the likelihood of the macros being evenly distributed in the diet are remote!

Certainly, today we are at complete odds with our ancestors soceity.
Back then they had all the time in the world and spent hours crushing this or that or hunting just for a few calories to surive.
Today in our mechanized soceity we sit behind a desk and have a 'pit stop' of a packaged sandwhich that has had all the hard work take out of it.

I personally try as much as possible to emulate a paleo diet but obviously i have to balance this with the fact it's 2008, most of the country is deforested and urbanised and that there are actually some benefits to modern lifestyle and nutrition (i.e i'm unlikely to starve next week)
I think today with wise choices you can do as well as you need to health wise, with a bit of effort and planning of course.

I think using sweet potatoes instead of wild roots is a different kettle of fish to having pots of cream however, for a start a sweet potato has about 10x the nutrient density of cream and whilst fat played a very big part in providing energy for our evolution i believe in getting fats from the whole source, say quality game (which is likely lower in fat than beef steak anyway) whilst consumption of milk has played a part in our evolution (very small amount of recent selection) and i don't really have a problem with drinking a bit of proper milk (unpasteurised yaks milk or whatever, not industrial cow milk!) but what i see a lot of is people wanting to get a certain level of fat in their diet and adding cream or butter which is a great way of adding calories and little nutrition! i think it is especially bad on a tupperware basis...
Anyway, sweet potatoes arn't exactly perfect anyway and i've been trying to find a source of other roots vegetables and basically resorting to trying to grow as many as possible with my dad in the garden (organically of course!)

EDIT: Also another factor you have to take into account is the selection from moving towards an agricultural soceity, when there's a big stress such as a huge change in diet a lot of selection happens, wether we like it or not we are not totally cavemen, it's hard to say how much an effect such selection (and 10 thousand years of agriculture) has had on us but it is something that must be taken into account.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

I think you are short changing both cream and butter as just empty fat calories with no nutrition!

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One aspect of vitamin A that deserves more emphasis is its role in protein utilization. Kwashiorkor is as much a disease of vitamin A deficiency, leading to impaired protein absorption, as it is a result of absence of protein in the diet. High protein, lowfat diets in children induce rapid growth along with depletion of vitamin A supplies. The results —tall, myopic, lanky individuals with crowded teeth, and poor bone structure —are a fixture in America. Growing children actually benefit from a diet that contains more calories as fat than as protein. Such a diet, rich in vitamin A, will result in steady, even growth, a sturdy physique and high immunity to disease.

Those familiar with the work of nutrition pioneer Weston Price are not so easily fooled. They know that vitamin-A-rich foods like liver, eggs, and cod liver oil are vital to good health. If you--or your children--don't like liver, eggs and cod liver oil, don't despair. Studies show that the best and most easily absorbed source of vitamin A is butterfat, a food relished by young and old alike. So use plenty of butter and cream from pasture-fed cows for good taste and wise nutritional practice.

http://www.realmilk.com/vita.html

If, as you say, we are NOT totally cavemen because of our ten thousand years of agriculture [including dairy farming] than you can't really deny the usefulness of butter, cheese and cream in the diet as they are as natural a modern, mimimally 'processed' food as you are going to get!

However, I personally do not believe those ten thousand years HAVE substantially changed the genome based on at least two and a half million years of hominin evolution. Moreover, it is not necessary to have adapted to agricultural lifestyles to enjoy dairy as we have always possessed the gene necessary to produce the enzyme lactase. Human mother's milk has more lactose than does cow's milk; if we did not produce lactase we would not be able to suckle at our mother's teat!

Regards game versus steak and its lower fat content, you sound like Loren Cordain. If that is true then you are still advocating an unequal macro ratio, this time with fats being ultra low while protein and carbs are high! What you and he fail to grasp - as evidenced by contemporary HGs - is that they will very often forego the lean muscle meat in favour of fatty depots around organs and eat organs like brain, which are largely made up of fats.