30 Bananas a day Durianrider, an analysis of his ‘paleo’ vegan diet

I think you’ve hit on the key point: you need to be eating and burning 6000+ calories a day to get sufficient nutrients out of that stuff. Most people flame out for reasons very adequately explained by Denise Minger and others.

First, dude could cut his calorie intake by over a third if he ate meat which was 100% digested and utilized by his body, instead of all that indigestible fiber. You’re right: raw vegan isn’t very far from Paleo. Just add meat.

Second, what is the environmental impact of eating box after box of bananas shipped halfway around the world, versus meat from perhaps a couple hundred miles away? Unless you live in an equatorial rainforest, a raw diet is going to involve fruits and vegetables (which are mostly water) shipped halfway around the world to feed you. Even people in Florida don’t get to eat fresh oranges all year.

JS
http://www.gnolls.org

Phenomenal breakdown of his diet, Julianne! Extremely interesting. That seems like an insane amount of both fructose and sucrose.

Started out good. Ended with the same old tired arguments. The paleo movement rhetoric is getting about as boring as the mainstream and their “healthy whole grains”.

Hey
As you are a pro-paleo author I thought this was a relatively fair consideration of his diet, but there are a couple of things that I wanted to comment on, from a health and nutrition perspective:

1) You state that at 65kg and 6’ tall, that he is skinny. On what basis are you stating that this is skinny. Skinny is a term that indicates having both a low body fat % and a low muscle mass. 65kg has often been used as the standard weight assessment for WHO reference ranges and requirements because 65-70kg is considered to be a healthy average weight for an adult male. Perhaps by today’s standards, which dictate that we should all look like Arnold Schwarzeneger if we want to be a healthy and attractive male, then he is skinny. But in most countries with people with a high level of centenarians, they do not, and have never had, bodybuilder physiques.

Calling a 6’ tall 65kg male, especially one who is an ultra-endurance athlete, skinny is the male equivalent of calling a 55kg female fat. It is promoting disordered and irrational ideas about what a healthy reference range for a weight should be.

A BMI of 19 is not underweight. It is on the lower end of the BMI ‘normal’ range, but it is in the normal category for a reason. Because it is. That isn’t taking into account the uselessness and invalidity of the BMI model, which disregards the significance of muscle mass and body fat %. Just using the standard BMI guidance alone, 19 is perfectly healthy and not skinny. Just because it is close in number to numbers like 17, which are skinny, each digit increment is considered significant, which is why they even use that model.

2) You state that he would do well on his diet, given his previous symptoms, due to the absence of legumes, grains and dairy. This is a fair point and is very true. The inference that a paleo diet may therefore have also improved his symptoms, since it is also absent of these foods, but includes meat, may also be true. But it may also not be true. Many people with autoimmune disorders react to a whole host of proteins. This may include meats too for many people. Highly sensitive individuals often need to remove all concentrated proteins, plant and animal based, before they will go into remission.

3) His use of B12 injections may sound like a fair point; certainly, it could be related to his lack of intake. But I do wish to point out that it is not uncommon for people with histories of autoimmune disorders, particularly crohns and celiac disease to have low intrinsic factor. B12 injection use is also very common amongst ultra-endurance athletes, regardless of diet. Because they have significantly elevated B12 requirements. However, ultimately, this is an area that I don’t consider worth debating further, since ultimately, you are right – there is as yet no evidence that it is possible to get B12 on a vegan diet without supplementing.

4) Nutrients – I think it is important to note that the sample day you selected contained no green leafy vegetables, which play an important part of most low fat raw vegan diets. These provide more concentrated sources of omega 3 fats, amino acids and minerals.

5) Re: Calories and chimps, this is true. Many primates do have different colon lengths and bacterial strains in quantities and locations different to humans, which enables them to extract more calories through SCFAs. Although I have never heard of the figure 65% of calories coming from these sources. That having been said, what is important to note is that primates tend to consume a significantly larger amount of their food volume from higher fibre foods like tougher vegetable matter and green leaves as well as more fibrous, astringent fruits. These tougher, more difficult to digest foods, would be uneconomical for humans, since they would require too much energy to digest for too little yield in terms of calories. But the sweeter fruits that we get commercially available are softer, and easier to digest. I find it unlikely that foods that are so high in simple carbohydrates and that are used so regularly by athletes, regardless of their diet, due to their ease of digestion and quick fuel release are such poor sources of calories.

6) Protein and urea – I think you have misunderstood your clinical biochemistry here. The reference ranges for all blood work come from a standard western dieter. This means a high protein consumer. Urea is a waste product of protein metabolism and hence is used as a marker. People on a low protein diet have low urea because there is less waste. That this is not normal is not a bad thing.

Go back and look in your nutritional biochemistry books and you will find that this is a good thing. Breakdown products of protein metabolism are harmful to the body. They are stressful to the major organs of the body and to the blood vessels. Urea is the least toxic metabolic end product the body can naturally create from protein to excrete the waste products safely.

There is nothing beneficial about having higher urea levels on a low protein diet. This would indicate possible negative nitrogen balance, since it would indicate that the body was creating more protein breakdown products like urea, despite having a low protein intake.

7) Protein and requirements – humans have the capacity to adapt to varying protein intakes, depending on regular intake of protein and depending on total calories consumed. If you go back and review your biochemistry books, you will find two things under the protein section: Adaptation and protein:energy ratio.

Essentially, because the body uses carbohydrates preferentially as a source of fuel (an indication that our evolutionary diet must have predominated in carbohydrates), and will use protein as its last reserve source of fuel (ie. Only when there is insufficient carbohydrates), more calories from carbohydrates reduces protein requirements. This is because breakdown of the bodies own muscle protein for fuel is reduced and hence less proteins are needed to be replaced. Dietary proteins are also not needed to be broken down for fuel by deamination and transamination. Hence the protein:energy ratio.

The amino acid requirements are also not fixed, as I said, due to protein adaptation. The idea behind protein adaptation is that the more protein the body consumes, the less efficient it becomes at recycling proteins into the amino acid pool and the more dependent it becomes on external sources of protein. The less protein the body consumes, the more conservative it becomes with its protein use and the more efficient it becomes in recycling amino acids into the amino acid pool. Biochemists have identified that the maximum level of adaptation to a low protein diet is 0.29g/kg of total protein. This is called obligatory nitrogen requirements, because we must consume at least this amount of protein, regardless of our carbohydrate and calorie intake, in order to maintain nitrogen balance.

Adaptation does take time (up to 6 weeks, depending on history of protein intakes), but since Harley has been on a vegan diet for 10 years and a raw vegan diet for 4 years, he will have certainly adapted to lower protein intakes, which means his amino acid requirements will not reflect the WHO estimated requirements.

Remember, the WHO figures, like all RDAS are estimates of what will be sufficient for 95-97% of the population, accounting for a variety of factors, including calorie intake, carbohydrate intake, activity levels, sleep patterns, medication use and typical nutrient intakes. They are not an indication of what each person actually needs, nor the limit of their capacity to adapt to lower protein intakes. But instead, reflect what will be a safe amount for most people to consume, accounting for as many variables as is realistically possible.

Hence the elevated figures of 1.5g/kg for athletes is based on a standard western diet consumer (ie. A consumer already consuming a large amount of protein in their diet, especially from animal based origins). Although he will need higher protein intakes than a non-athletic raw vegan is certainly true. But the 1.5g/kg cannot be applicable, since it does not reflect protein adaptation capacity, nor protein:energy ratio. Harley eats more calories from simple carbohydrates and therefore needs less protein. Think about it realistically: If he wasn’t getting enough amino acids, he would go into negative nitrogen balance and therefore would be consistently losing muscle mass. This would mean he would be unable to continuously participate in ultra-endurance athletics. Since he has been on a raw vegan diet for 4 years, and has not only maintained his weight but has gained weight over this last year (hence I don’t think the 65kg is accurate anymore), this would be literally physiologically and biochemically impossible. He would have been in hospital within the first year of his lfrv diet, since he has been doing ultra-endurance athletics since before he went raw.

It is also remember that the WHO is not unbiased in its assessment of nutrient requirements. It is the joint effort of WHO and UNFAO (ie. The UN food and agricultural organisation). There is a significant point to remember with this: The WHO state that between 0.56g/kg-0.66g/kg is the safe estimate for 95-97% of the people in developing countries to maintain nitrogen balance, despite the fact that in developing countries, they struggle to get enough total calories more often than not. Yet in western developed countries, they say that 0.78-0.83g/kg is the safe estimate for 95-97% of the population to maintain nitrogen balance, despite the fact that most people have no trouble getting enough calories. Often the reverse is true.

Why is this? I believe there are two reasons:

Firstly, because in the developing countries people have got used to (ie. Adapted to) a higher protein intake and therefore will require more in order to avoid going into a temporary state of negative nitrogen balance whilst their body readapts to a different protein intake.

Secondly, because the UNFAO want people in developing countries, who consume the most animal products than in any other countries, to continue to consume large amounts of protein, since this is beneficial to the economies of these countries (and therefore to the UNFAO). If they told people that they could adapt to protein intakes as low as 0.3g/kg if they increased their carbohydrate and calorie intake, despite going into a temporary state of negative nitrogen balance until adaptation fully occurs, people would realise that they don’t actually need to spend all that money on expensive animal products and would realise they have been consuming more than they actually needed for all this time.

If people actually started lowering their protein intake, they would start to notice that problems like diabetes, heart disease, cancer, osteoporosis, auto-immune disorders and other diseases that can be linked to excess protein consumption, reverse. This would not be beneficial to an economy built on animal based agriculture and modern medicine.

8) Fructose. Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of misrepresentation of Robert Lustigs work recently. Lustig himself is VERY clear that WHOLE food carbohydrate sources of fructose are not problematic to health. The problems associated with poor fructose metabolism are a direct result of the consumption of refined sources of fructose (ie. Sources that have had their fibre removed). He is very clear that fruit juices and high fructose vegetables (like carrots and beets) can cause problems. But these foods will NOT cause problems when consumed as whole foods. The body is perfectly able to process fructose when fibre is present naturally with the food. But when the fibre and the fructose are not bound in a whole food, (as with cane sugar, syrups like agave, honey, high fructose-corn syrup, glucose-fructose syrup, fruit and sweet vegetable juices) the body is unable to process fructose in the same way since it does not recognise it. Hence it goes straight to the liver, where it is not processed efficiently. The reasons why refining seems to impair the livers ability to process fructose safely is not yet clear, but the observation has been very clearly and emphatically made by Lustig.

This is called scientific cherry picking; selecting information that is convenient to ones argument and representing it in a way that appears to confirm it, whilst deleting key pieces of information that do not confirm it.

Now to be clear, I am not accusing you of cherry picking necessarily. It is possible you are deliberately misrepresenting his research to present an unnecessarily carbohydrate-phobic, fruit-phobic point. But I realise that is also possible that you have not actually read any of Lustigs papers, or his articles, or listened to his TV/Radio interviews. For you would be well aware of what his research says and would not have posted this if you had. I believe it is more probable that you have read about fructose elsewhere from trusted a source of information that you respect and rather than investigating the subject yourself, you have believed what you had read and repeated it.

Unfortunately, the trouble with biochemistry is that people memorise the overwhelming pieces of information for exams, but don’t actually consider its implications in clinical nutrition, particularly when hearing about ideas from other authors, such as high protein, low carb, low fruit diets. And wouldn’t be so easily persuaded by such ideas.

9) EFA’s – You say his intake would have been higher if he had eaten some nuts and seeds. This is true, but its also true that eating more tender green leaves, like romaine lettuce and spinach in quantity, would have produced higher intakes. You state that short chain ALAs are poorly converted to long chain fats like EPA and DHA. This is a generalisation that is not true. If we weren’t able to convert fats properly and easily, our body wouldn’t have evolved the mechanism to do so. Unfortunately, this idea has been so heavily propagated by the supplement industry and the fish industry that people have once again neglected to remember their biochemistry and the scientific method.

What do I mean by the scientific method in this regard? The scientific method states that if you have a theory that you want to test, you must devise an experiment to put the theory to the test. In order to do this, you must first make sure you are asking the right question. This is the most difficult part, and experiments often reveal that infact the wrong question was being asked. The next part is to try to identify as many variables as possible that could influence the results when formulating the hypothesis to be tested. Then the experiment must take place, with results recorded and reviewed, and compared with the original hypothesis. Then one must ask what variables could have influenced the results and what could be adjusted for future experiments to clarify the conclusions. This is called evaluation.

What has been observed is that in some people tested, ALA from flax seeds are not well converted to EPA and DHA. What variables could there be?

Well we know that firstly, there are other sources of ALA besides flax. We also know that flax is poorly digested, so its worth questioning what influence this has and whether other sources might yield better conversion. For example, honeydew melons are very easy to digest and are a good source of ALA.

We know that protein that naturally accompanies fats is also important for its proper absorption, utilisation and conversion. Flax oils, which may address the problem of digestion of flax, will be devoid of oil

We know that in order for conversion to take place, we need sufficient: glucose, magnesium, vitamin C, manganese, zinc, selenium, B vits. These need to not only be present in sufficient amounts in the diet, but we must not be deficient in these either. Since many people are deficient in magnesium and zinc at the very least, and since most people consume only enough vitamin C to avoid scurvy, rather than for optimal biochemical functioning, especially given their levels of oxidative stress due to alcohol consumption, refined sugar consumption, medication use etc. It is easy to see why the conversion pathways would be poor in some people.

As EPA and DHA intakes increase in the diet, in frequency and quantity, ALA conversion reduces. Just as with all things, the body becomes lazier and conserves energy where possible to improve short term efficiency, when there is less of a perceived need to do something. This is a really important point for vegetarians and vegans.

Consumption of large intakes of omega 6, saturated fat and regular trans fat intakes all increase omega 3 requirements and may reduce the activity of the conversion pathways.

Some medications can interfere with conversion pathways and can deplete the body of micronutrients that are essential for conversion. It is unknown whether the subjects in ALA conversion experiments were taking any such medications. If so, this could play a factor in this.

Hence it is not known whether his ALA conversion will actually be poor and your assessment that if he had an omega 3 test (which I agree would be interesting to see) it would certainly come out deficient is based on pure assumption with no evidence to support the theory.

10) Preformed vitamin A – clearly since Harley has good ,levels of vitamin A, a raw vegan diet is not missing out on the consumption of vitamin A. One of the benefits of plant based precursors in my opinion is that the body can decide how much it needs to convert and how much to excrete. With preformed vitamin A, there is no option available. Of course some people do not convert vitamin A as well, but again, as with EFAs it is unscientific to state that this means that vegan diets are missing out. What this means is that we must look at the clinical variables that will negate beta carotene -> vitamin A conversion and change these circumstances if one wants to consume a vegan diet and get enough vitamin A.

11) Creatine – our bodies produce creatine in the liver. Hence this is not an essential nutrient. How do you think other animals that people get their creatine from in the diet have creatine there? Most mammals synthesise creatine, just like humans do.

12) Carnosine – our bodies make carnosine too.

13) Choline – this is not only found in animal based sources. And bananas are actually a pretty good source of it. Infact, if you go on nutritiondata.com and insert his diet into there, you will see that he significantly exceeds the National Academy of Science recommended intake of 550mg for males. He actually consumes almost 3 times as much (1435mg).
Take care
Adam x

A lot has been covered already, but I want to answer your question about decreased libido. Harley had a vasectomy which artificially raises testosterone levels. Other low fat raw vegans have noticed lower libido levels.

Doug Graham is aging rapidly probably because of his diet.

I don’t know what he was, but he has been on a ‘primal-paleo-diet’, ala low-fat-raw-vegan-diet for over 25 years.

Ancient man lived in tribes of various sizes. Put a small group of Fruitarians in a wild setting, with proper growing seasons (no plantations or farms etc) and rivalry from other species for food sources, would it be possible to provide such a high caloric intake for a sustained period of time? Let alone a single day?

Humming birds eat many times their body weight in insects–the sugar water/nectar is not enough. Chickens will eat grubs, termites, insects, reptiles, rodents etc.–and chicken parts! Herbivores incidentally eat insects while grazing, as do gorillas. It has been observed that gorillas and chimpanzees will occasionally kill small animals, including monkeys. Orangutans eat ants, bees, and wasp galls. Monkeys, while eating primarily fruits and leaves eat grubs, insects, eggs, reptiles.

None of our monkey and primate ancestors were 100% fruitarian, not now not then.

Our direct ancestors chose to increase the meat eating, which is how we became the big brained primates that we are. Anthropologists record world wide that in cultures that had to depend on agriculture, their brain size decreased from hunter-gatherer norms.

Not going there.

I have seen this guy walked right past him about 4 yrs ago when he visited my city Adelaide in Australia, I noticed who he was as I bumped into his youtube clips many years ago. He has no build looks like a skinny vegan. By chance today i bumped into a video of his girlfriend showing what she eats in a day, if you look at the video here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfHFyKAX2lM&tracker=False&NR=1 they have a bbq and the house looks similar to what you see in Durianrider’s youtube clips. If they claim to be vegan why would they have a bbq for?

Wow, I’ve learn so much from this blog and thread of comments. This might send this off on a whole new tangent, but here I go. I’ve been trying to encourage some of the ladies over on the MDA forum to measure and weigh their food. Some of them are stalling or failing to achieve their body composition goals. Many of them are not getting enough protein, 1 gram per pound of body weight, so I think they need to measure and track their inputs. I don’t think the unweighted/unmeasured approach works for everyone. So, what does all that have to do with this blog? I like where el-bo is going with his thought, show me your inputs and your outputs. It would be interesting to have a group of meatless paleos and another group of meat paleos track their food for a month and then run blood panels. Let’s see if there are deficiencies in the inputs and any downfalls in the results.

Is it also a good pose that is emphasising his muscles more?

Who knew the Paleo crowd were such idiots. Here’s a latest photo of Durian from 3/7/2011: http://durianrider.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/photo-on-2011-03-07-at-12-15.jpg

Notice how he isn’t a fat ass like many of you.

Yet the majority of Paleo diet & cooked meat eaters (even grass-fed meat eaters) I’ve seen are usually overweight or look sickly (at least to me). Yes there are some who lift weights and exercise who look great, but that is the result of their exercise (not what they eat!) . There are sick, thin, fat, and healthy people on all kinds of diets. You just have to find what works for you.

I think it all comes down to what you’re comfortable eating. I’m not comfortable killing animals as my food source. I think everybody should respect each others food choice and go about their merry way. I don’t think DurianRider is set out to offend anyone, he is just vocal about his experience on a low raw food diet, and is tired of the snake oil salesmen pushing superfoods and other supplement.

@ Durianrider
Hey mate if your diet is so perfect why did your brother in law just fail so badly on it?? Loss of strenght, lightheaded, tired all the time. After introducing fish and eggs back into his diet in 6 weeks he’s lifting heavy and looking and feeling good again. Hold on , let me guess, he wasn’t doing it right??? You really should change your angle mate as you could probably do alot of good for bad farming habits and get into a few of these guys faces, but to preach your bullshit from anything else but a moral point of view (your moral point of view) just makes you look like a dick!! You are now even known as a freak on many of the other raw food websites and even people from 30bad think your nuts. It’s like watching Charlie Sheen all over again. WINNING???? Worst part about all this is you are taking DONATIONS from hard working people so you can travel the world for free. I gotta take my hat off to ya bra your a smart cookie. Intersting thread, as usual Richard turns up and Harley does what he does best. RUN!!!! ha ha ha

I think Harley looks pretty fit. I’m not a vegan but I’m a cyclist. You should see how other cyclists look. Some are A LOT skinnier than Harley. People have to give Harley some credit for the fact that he does cycling and NOT weight training or bodybuilding. You have to look at his appearance and weight from a cyclist’s point of view. Check out how other cyclists look before you rip into him. I’m saying this as someone who eats everything so I have no reason to defend him.
I tried out the Paleo diet twice for 3 months each time. My performance SUCKED big time which it didn’t when I did a 2 month vegan experiment.

For all those Paleo style eaters: try doing long distance cycling on that diet yourself. Talk is cheap. I know the author of The Cyclist’s Training Bible, Joe Friel, recommends this diet but he is probably just trying to cash in or whatever but if you read books by people like Chris Carmichael who trained one of the best cyclists, Lance Armstrong, of all time, you’ll notice that he recommends a high carb, low protein diet.
At least Harley DOES cycling and races so he walks the walk and doesn’t just talk.

Just my 2 cents to Harley Johnstone(aka Durianriders)

Well, you both deserve each other. You and Durianrider are both obsessed, rabid and rigid. Like your both in a quest to uphold an ego that is far to large for sanity.