If I replaced my balanced diet that includes lean meat, lots of fruit and veg and a lot of fish with the same caloric equivalent of say Big Macs for the next 10 years would I be just as healthy?
Pythons may grow just the same regardless of the type of protein and fat content they consume but how healthy will their liver, kidneys and heart be after 10 years? They evolved over millions of years feeding on low fat native prey.
My black cockatoos could survive on sunflower seeds and some owners do just that and the birds are clearly not healthy or happy. Mine get a regular diet of almonds, walnuts, pecans, sprouted seeds and fresh banksia cones and they absolutely glow with good health.
You are using a strange strawman argument. I did not say anything remotely like a diet of Big Macs being similar to a healthy diet. Just in case someone was tempted to say something so ridiculous I pointed out several ways in which a healthy diet was important. I pointed out the micronutrient importance, which obviously is massively different compared to Big Macs and a healthy diet, and even though it is not relevant to snakes, just in case someone was tempted to make an irrelevant argument, I pointed out that processing is an issue for humans. Perhaps it is worth asking if you know what micronutrients are, what macronutrients are, what the issues with food processing are?
You're correct that perhaps after many years on an exclusive diet of meat, skin and bones there may be some issue, but I can absolutely guarantee that if you were to raise a human from weaning on a diet of McDonald's it would not be healthy when it became an adult. There would be dramatic differences when comparing humans raised from weaning to adult on healthy diets vs nothing but Big Macs. The fact that all the snakes I raised on the experimental diet grew and were in equal health, vigour and condition at maturity (actually they were better, but the difference was not statistically significant) shows there is no evidence to say it is any worse. This doesn't prove it isn't better or worse, but we have zero demonstrable evidence that it is worse, only speculation. If you want to use your McDonald's analogy (I wouldn't make the analogy myself, but to whatever extent it works, here we go), feeding a snake a skin-on chicken neck is much better for a snake than McDonald's is for a human.
I'm certainly not telling anyone what to do or saying a lifelong diet of alternative feed items is as good as whole prey. I really don't know. It may be the same, better or worse, but I'm sharing the results of my own study which to my knowledge was more extensive than anyone else has ever done, which is why I did it, and there is no evidence that there is any problem. You are purely speculating. You have zero evidence of anything, just a hypothesis. It's a reasonable hypothesis, but there is zero evidence for it an significant evidence against it.
Also keep in mind that what happens in nature is usually not optimal. Humans today have far better diets than our natural diets (even considering all the garbage we eat), which is one of the reasons we live longer than ever. If we choose to eat the healthiest possible diet available today it is far, far better than a natural diet. Meat hasn't changed much in the last few million years, but most of everything else we eat is completely different from anything natural. The fruit and vegetables you see in Coles and Woolies are radically different from anything found in nature, and most of them are nutritionally far superior. Our natural diet included a lot of semi poisonous and very difficult to digest foods. Many humans today would die and most would get sick if they immediately tried to convert to a genuinely natural diet. Natural is not best. Our natural diet included various poisons, tanins and non digestible fibrous plant material which we are simply better off without. We have the ability to change things to make them better than nature. It's entirely possible that by removing things such as faeces from the contents of the digestive systems of whole prey, there is a significant benefit to the snakes. Snake digestive and immune systems are forced to work extremely hard to overcome some of the digestive, toxicity and biohazard challenges presented by eating whole prey items. Most of these are eliminated when feeding a meat, skin and bone meal.
Obviously a diet of fat, meat and bone supplies all the macronutrients a snake requires. If there is a problem, it can only be a micronutrient issue. Which micronutrient do you think may be lacking if whole prey items are not used? Can you even name one and describe how a deficiency in it may affect a snake?
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Funny you mention this. I am currently on the keyto diet. Ever since I have excluded carbs and increased protein and healthy fats I've lost around 20 - 30kg since July. I've struggled with weight forever and i can't believe how easy it is to lose weight with this new understanding of how we access our fat stores.
The ketogenic diet works on a different principle. It can work, and you're living proof, but you're still working on a calories in:calories burned ratio principle. It's pretty controversial and has many critics, I'm not convinced it's a good thing to do, but it's very interesting and certainly can be an effective way to lose body fat in the short term. I love that many people do it and serve as walking experiments providing empirical data
My main question over it being a good idea is that since it's a fairly extreme thing for your body to do it's not healthy long term lifestyle option, and while I've seen plenty of people use it effectively they generally don't seem to have lasting effects once the ketogenic diet is stopped (I have seen exceptions). It's probably a good option for people who know how to make the transition from couch potato to ketogenic fat burner to healthy long term lifestyle, but most people can't do the second transition.
A HUGE congratulations on 20-30kg in under 3 months! That's a spectacular effort! Best of luck keeping it off, which is the real challenge, but you're clearly one of the extreme examples of people willing to put in the effort to understand what is required and then sticking to it, which puts you right up in a top percentage of people in terms of motivation and discipline, so I think you probably will. People who achieve results like those are really inspirational!