So last week was spent doing pap smears on a desperately poor population of women, Nicaraguan prostitutes. There is a faith-based Christian outreach down there and we go twice a year for a week long trip. It's incredibly rewarding.
My roommate, Richard, and I got to talking. We're about the same age and he was bemoaning how he just can't lose weight despite having hired a personal trainer. The PaleoPathologist began evangelizing Richard on the virtues of low carb for losing weight. He was fascinated and said he would be ordering the Atkins book when we got back to the states.
He then began talking about the two years he spent among the Gabbra of northern Kenya. He mentioned that they were desperately poor nomadic pastoral people who packed up their tents a few times a year and moved their herds. To imagine where they live, Americans should just think of the "lush" desert terrain of southern Arizona!
As I told him about the Inuit and their almost total lack of plant foods, he exclaimed that the Gabbra seemed to live off milk from Camels and Goats, with the occasional bit of meat from a worn out goat or camel. (He loved the camel's milk, said it was incredibly delicious.) He said he never saw them eat ANY plant food at all, and they were tall, strong, good looking, healthy happy people. In fact he said if you made it out of childhood (tough in any primitive setting) the people had good long lives.
In fact, the only plant food they get is wheat and sugar they trade for, unfortunately.
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