[.ca] Neanderthin (ISBN 0312975910)

Eat healthfully for the first time in your life:
I'm a low-carb dieter who lost 47 lbs on the Atkins diet last year. During that time I felt great, slept better, skin cleared up, had wonderful energy and also experienced other little side benefits to the weight loss that are too numerous to get into here. However, after several months I plateaued at about 25 lbs above my ideal, and of course I wanted to jump-start my weight loss again. So, I did a little investigating, discovered the Neanderthin diet and decided to give it a try. A brief summary of the basics of this diet: eat no technology-dependant foods. By that, author Ray Audette meant that if a food needs technology beyond a sharp stick or stone to process it to become edible, or to exist in its present form, it was never a natural part of our human diet, which had its origins with hunter-gatherer societies. What foods absolutely must be processed and/or cooked are: grains, including wheat, rice and most others; starchy vegetables like potatoes and yams; legumes, including peanuts, beans and peas. Refined sugars and artificial sweeteners are absolutely unnatural, although a small bit of honey is fine. Modern fruits are okay but must be eaten sparingly due to the fact that they have been altered over thousands of years to barely resemble the wild originals that our ancestors snacked on, usually much larger and with a much higher sugar content. Fermented foods are of course absent without our technology, so that excludes cheeses, vinegars and alcohols. Dairy products are also absent from the lives of hunter gatherers for obvious reasons. That leaves us with meats, fish/seafood, eggs, nuts, most vegetables, greens, and small amounts of fruits and berries. I tried the hunter-gatherer diet for about one month. Just as with Atkins, I felt wonderful and had all of the other side benefits of the low-carb diet, but my weight loss was still stalled. You see, the allowance of fruits on this diet was too great a temptation and I overdid it there. Longtime dieters may be familiar with the term "trigger", which is anything that causes your cravings to resurface. Some people like me have carb triggers so sensitive that even fruits can activate them. So, reluctantly I concluded that I would have to replace the Neanderthin diet with a low-carb diet that forbid me to have any fruit, at least during the weight loss phase. When I am finished and at my goal weight, however, I will return to the Neanderthin diet to maintain my excellent health, as I can't imagine a life entirely without strawberries, peaches and melons! I should note here that the authors Audette and Gilchrist do not advocate this diet as an aid to weight loss per se, but for reversing health problems and improving overall fitness. They theorize that diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, obesity and many other curses of civilization are the byproducts of an immune system response to unnatural foods like grains: they show how you can trace the origins and progression of these conditions from the time grains and other technology-dependant foods were introduced into a culture. Examples in our European culture point to the Industrial Revolution as the biggest health problem of our history, when steam powered mills made refined white flours and sugars commonly available and cheap to the masses. Until then heart disease and diabetes (just to pick two examples) were so rare as to be unheard of; now they are epidemic in the USA, which by the way consumes more refined flour and sugar per person than any nation in the world. Audette's theories and explanations make perfect sense to me, a non-scientist. They may partly explain why other low-carb diets are successful for weight loss. I can also see the sense in removing refined and processed foods from my diet, along with all the chemicals and trans fats that come with them. It's just too bad that a hunter-gatherer diet has a built in flaw, namely that the diet food industry can't cash in on it (remember, no artificial sweeteners or processed foods), and therefore it won't get the kind of publicity that diets like Atkins and Protein Power have had. Hopefully, the good word of mouth from satisfied dieters will spread and eventually get Audette nd Gilchrist the acclaim they deserve for helping so many people get back their health and quality of life. -Andrea, aka Merribelle

Worth It:
The author briefly details the history of wheat and grains. He reminds the reader that many of the foods we eat are so new and so toxic that the human body was not meant to digest them. He must be right, because the moment I stopped eating wheat, my asthma symptoms diminished the tendency to get the flu decreased. This diet is the least complicated of all the ones out there now. For those who prefer simple guidelines over complicated measuring (he has list of permanent no-no's) this book is good.

Neanderthin by Ray Audette:
This book advises to eat like a caveman/person in combination with rigorous exercise to lose weight, live longer and feel better. The work starts with a quote from the Bible in Genesis 2:17 which admonishes us " Do not eat the fruit of technology 'that makes the edible' the inedible." The author traces the history of dieting, the agricultural revolution, a mosaic of diet tips, the five week neanderthin diet and maintenance of a food diary to accomplish the same. Some of the recommended food preparations are spinach, mushroom and bacon frittata; fried apples; vegetable juice omelete, nut milk, applesauce, green onions and eggs, green chili stew, soups, shrimp cocktail, nut pizza, neanderthin guacamole and venetian salad. He reminds us of how R Buckminster Fuller lost much weight and lived to be 88 years of age by choosing an elemental diet consisting of animals that fed on vegetables. In addition, the raw diet meat should emulate pemmican. This high-energy food is made by mixing raw lean meat with animal fat in a one-to-one ratio. Pemmican is known to store for a long time without the traditional refrigeration. Foods which require technological intervention to become edible are candidates for elimination; such as, corn, grains, sugar and potatoes. Alcohol is another forbidden food because it is a by-product of yeast digestion. Amazingly, it is important to have fats in the diet and to drink large quantities of water. The book emphasizes that the body needs lean red meat so that it gets the enzymes to metabolize iron. The work lists internet sources; such as neanderthin.com and paleodiet.com. The author believes in getting the daily allotment of calcium from dark leafy green vegetables, nuts and fish. This book is a refreshing departure from the standard diets. Many people have tried this with apparent results in maintaining weight loss and gaining energy. The program is a combination of elemental food groups and exercise. The book is highly recommended for anyone desiring to adhere to a diet designed to extend life.

Food Poisoning:
This book will change your life as it has done for many. NeanderThin is not the Atkins Diet NeanderThin primarily advocates a Technology Free Diet. The basic premise as stated somewhat whimsically but 'Dead Serious' by Ray Audette in NeanderThin is: "Never eat anything that you cannot get naked, armed with only a sharp stick." What does this mean? First of all NeanderThin does not recommend the Atkins and other cookie cutter diets. Mr. Audette's IQ is above sea level. He understands that each person's metabolism is different due to the individual's genetic make up. Add to that the fact that instead of addressing individuals who from birth have only eaten technologically created foods, the people that are seeking help are ones that have already reached a point in their lives where they have health issues, which are impacting their lives, often quite severely. Bringing people back from the edge of disaster is not easily accomplished. Unlike those, who after years of self abuse and sins find salvation in their spirit, the flesh that has been corrupted will never fully recover from the damage inflicted by years of poisons that were willingly ingested. Ignorance is far from blissful. A mother would never voluntarily poison her children by feeding them arsenic laced foods. Yet in looking back, the health and obesity crisis in America, which is spreading like a virus into the rest of the world, started at home. Parents are waking up in droves to the fact that indeed, they are the cause of their children's auto-immune diseases and dietary habits that lead to their early demise and disabilities. Because of course we, (as I am among those parents, and so are you, and so were your grandparents; we only had the best intentions in rearing our children) cannot easily accept that we have poisoned our children's bodies and minds, we look for blame in corporate and government conspiracies and other delusional; places. The road to Hell on Earth is paved with loving good intentions. A mother sits by her 40 year old son's hospital bed. Her son weighs 230 pounds and is dying. The diagnosis is clear. Her son will die soon. She is looking for the cause. She is told that her son is dying because of the accumulation of plaque in his arteries and failure of his liver and immune system. She also is confronted with the fact that the root causes go back to childhood and continued into adulthood/ His illness is caused by the dietary pattern that he followed, This is why he finds himself about to have major surgery. The surgery, which will cost more than his income of several years, may only expedite his demise or if the operation is successful, may result in a few more years of survival in a less than pleasant state of being. Is it too late for ME? Unfortunately, many who ask this question must accept the fact that indeed, it is too late. After a certain threshold is exceeded, at best there will be some improvement but the damage will not be undone. Early detection and Prevention are an option only before the effects of what was ingested over many years of ignorance results in what we are observing today. This is true in cancers, aids, and virtually all the preventable instances diseases and illnesses that are caused by ingestion of substances that for all practical purposes have turned out to be time release poisons. I use the word poison only because a poison under any other name is still a poison. Save the Children It may be too late for you but you can still Save the Children. Once you understand and accept that 'you are what you eat and what you are eating has eaten, and the results for you are less than positive, how you in good conscience can continue to poison your children? The Unhappy Meals at the fast food establishment, the family sized bags of ground and fried grains, the greasy death fries that you adore are from the same class of poisons. They make you feel good at the moment of ingestion yet will slowly cause the debilitating illness that will either kill you or force you to live in misery. All this while paying hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for each day that you prolong the agony while family and friends pay and pray for your recovery. Drug abuse can be stopped and will not have the same long term negative effects as abusing one's body by poisoning it every day with harmful substances sold without even a warning label. Regardless what stage of un-health you find yourself in you will improve, even if you cannot undo all the damage done. Starting today: "Never eat anything that you cannot get naked, armed with only a sharp stick." Teach Your Children Well! Teach your children this same simple principle and you will avoid the fights at the grocery store and restaurant. "Never eat anything that you cannot get naked, armed with only a sharp stick." Instead of making up some reason that even you do not understand reiterate the teaching. With all the peer pressure, TV and print advertising and promotions they are exposed to it will not be easy, but they will thank you later. They will thank you as they watch their friends suffer years later and loose them by outliving them by years and even decades. So instead of trying to win the parental popularity contest, be kind to them and do not poison them or allow them to poison themselves. This is what I Learned from this book.

Buy, Borrow or Steal a copy of this book!!!:
Excellent, this book will change your life if you follow it. It is very logical in its arguments and it all makes perfect sense. I used to suffer from acne and eczema but now that I've changed to a paleolithic diet my skin skin look great. I feel better as well and lost a bit of excess weight around the tummy. This book will put you on the road to healthy living, follow it and you'll see. The book advises eating more green vegetables but I don't like to eat them but I have a shot of wheatgrass juice everyday which is equal to 2kg of green vegetables. Lucky for me. Other books i can recommend to compliment this is "Power of Juicing" by Ray Kordich for those who don't like eating vegetables and "Beyond Brawn" by Stuart McRobert for those who wish to buff up.