TMA Stances compared with snapshots from MMA

[Flying Crane]

I'm assuming we are talking about refined sugar (the white sugar) and not natural sugar like honey. Sugar has been around for a long time but I'm not sure when refined sugar was invented. Most likely refined sugar was expensive so only certain people would actually have access to it.

In terms of refined sugar, the question would be, did kung fu schools have access to sugar in the first place. If they didn't have access to it, then they wouldn't have used it anyway. Considering that most of the world was poor. I can imagine gardens and farms being a big thing. If someone was to put us in a shack in the woods with a bag of seeds, we probably wouldn't be to concern with refining sugar. It may be better to just find some honey bees and save the honey and spend the rest of the time making sure that the crops grew. Refine sugar seems to be something that one would do if they had a lot of time on their hands.

A brief google-fu tells me the it was first refined something like 2500 years ago, but was rare in the diet until sometime in the 1600s when it began to be refined commercially in the new world by the Portuguese on their plantations in Brazil.

Of course natural sugar like honey, or what occurs in fruit, would have been available to some extent. Would that stuff have been for the exclusive use of the elite? Perhaps.

But what I was hinting at was, it’s unlikely that kung fu people “thousands of years ago” would have had a high enough discretionary sugar content in their diet to distinguish its effects.

Let’s be real.

 

[Monkey Turned Wolf]

Everyone knows this. It is common knowledge. That’s why I only drink alcohol during training.

You should, if your goal is self-defense. A lot of fights end up happening in bars, so you need to be able to fight while drunk. Otherwise it's just not realistic. Use that line next time someone says competition is the best way to train self-defense; they don't allow you to be drunk in the ring.

 

[JowGaWolf]

But what I was hinting at was, it’s unlikely that kung fu people “thousands of years ago” would have had a high enough discretionary sugar content in their diet to distinguish its effects.

Let’s be real.

I don't think so either. I don't see anyone going around stating not to eat sugar. I think I'm going to stick with this info here. It talks about how sugar was used in China.
Sugar: An Ancient Culinary and Medical Commodity

This seems to be more accurate than the other resources I've found. Which had more of a commodity perspective of sugar.

This shows sugar being used as medicine (which would be counter to the good health argument, unless it was natural sugar and not refined sugar) The Ultimate Guide to Chinese Sugars and Sweeteners

Based on what I could find the Chinese actually used a lot of sugar but not much refined sugar. They also ate a lot of dried food. Which make sense when they don't have a way to keep things like meat and other perishables fresh. Their traditional cooking was based on how to cook food in a way that doesn't spoil quickly so it took a while for refrigerators to catch on in China. Didn't see much about "cooking for health" My guess they were like most people in the world. People were lucky enough to have food on the table even if it was a bunch of leafy plants. Food for necessity vs food for enjoyment. Sounds like much of their food development was similar to how other cultures prepared their dishes.

I didn't see anything on those pages that would suggest an Anti-sugar movement like we see now. If I had to guess getting sugar wasn't exactly as easy as going to the supermarket. Because of that their sugar use would have solely been based on rationing sugar and not eating it up all at once. In the U.S. it's totally opposite. Everything has sugar and salt.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Yeah....there is no way in hell I’d ever try any of that stuff....I’ve had decades of training and full contact fighting and my bodies just fine without any of that

So you're the magic ninja around here, huh? You'd never try ginseng? It's literally kung fu medicine.

It might not work for everyone, but you never know what else they're consuming. Cigarettes? A lot of great kung fu masters smoked themselves to death.

Some of them are revered, even, and one has to wonder why.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Sugar was common in the diet thousands of years ago?

Everyone knows this. It is common knowledge. That’s why I only drink alcohol during training.

Yes. A history of sugar – the food nobody needs, but everyone craves

Actually, one of the hallmarks of the current state of human evolution is the consumption of sugar.

Why do you think they call it the "Paleo" diet? It's very different. It's also 12,000 years old.

 

[Oily Dragon]

can you post a few herbal tea recipes? i love it when people enthuse about infusions

do you have any with nettles, we have lots of nettles but no Ginseng

I have a guide in Word format somewhere on a backup drive, I'll have to check up on it.

Suffice to say, kung fu medicine is at least half of kung fu stancework. If you don't account for the inflammation caused by some of these external exercises, you're going to regret it later. Your mileage may vary.

 

[Oily Dragon]

I'm assuming we are talking about refined sugar (the white sugar) and not natural sugar like honey. Sugar has been around for a long time but I'm not sure when refined sugar was invented. Most likely refined sugar was expensive so only certain people would actually have access to it.

In terms of refined sugar, the question would be, did kung fu schools have access to sugar in the first place. If they didn't have access to it, then they wouldn't have used it anyway. Considering that most of the world was poor. I can imagine gardens and farms being a big thing. If someone was to put us in a shack in the woods with a bag of seeds, we probably wouldn't be to concern with refining sugar. It may be better to just find some honey bees and save the honey and spend the rest of the time making sure that the crops grew. Refine sugar seems to be something that one would do if they had a lot of time on their hands.

Of course they did. Ip Man had ample access to opiods, too.

 

[Flying Crane]

Yes. A history of sugar – the food nobody needs, but everyone craves

Actually, one of the hallmarks of the current state of human evolution is the consumption of sugar.

Why do you think they call it the "Paleo" diet? It's very different. It's also 12,000 years old.

Yes, that is the same article that I found. Sugar first refined 2500 years ago. First refined on a large, commercial level in the 1600s on the Brazilian sugar plantations. Prior to Brazil, sugar was uncommon in the human diet. Ergo, no kung fu masters from thousands of years ago would have had enough sugar in the diet to have determined its effects in large quantities.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Of course they did. Ip Man had ample access to opiods, too.

Drugs like opioids are different. They aren't based on how much money you can make. They are often given to those who have little money and are sold by those who have a lot of money. That has always been the case with drugs that are highly addictive and do harm. You can't compare opioids to food. That would be like saying me saying that everyone has access to Caviar because everyone has access to opioids, which isn't true. Pick any large inner city neighborhood and I guarantee that that it'll be easier to buy opioids in that neighborhood than it is to buy caviar. I guarantee opioids are also cheaper

Certain items are seen by the upper income levels as exclusive to them and the price fits. Poor people probably had access to Cane Sugar with no problem, but can sugar is not the same as Refined Sugar. Refined Sugar is the unhealthy sugar. I'm not sure if you have eaten raw sugar cane before, but I grew up on it. Sugar Cane doesn't taste like refined sugar. Far from it. Even honey is sweeter than cane sugar.

The problem that your article has is that the article doesn't talk about how sugar was used or cooked with

 

[JowGaWolf]

Yes, that is the same article that I found. Sugar first refined 2500 years ago. First refined on a large, commercial level in the 1600s on the Brazilian sugar plantations. Prior to Brazil, sugar was uncommon in the human diet. Ergo, no kung fu masters from thousands of years ago would have had enough sugar in the diet to have determined its effects in large quantities.

Refined sugar was probably uncommon because it was an expensive product back then. The process to refine sugar wouldn't have been as extensive as it is now and it wouldn't have been something that poor people would have access to. Like some of the food items today, those items would mainly be eaten by people who had a lot of money. A good example that I can think of is Lobster. Lobster is expensive so many people don't buy it, compared to the people who buy and eat crabs, which can be found in a lot of the middle to lower income areas.

I did a quick search for lobster and the price of lobster is or was $16 per pound. The average weight of a lobster is 10 pounds. There's no person that 's going to buy that whole lobster. And I purchased it to cook with, then there's no way I would sell the total parts, or a dish that would be less than what I bought it for. Blue crab has very little meat in comparison to lobster so you'll find crabs in the poorest of neighbor hoods especially if you live in one of the coastal states.

Oily Dragon is making the assumption that because Sugar was available, that it was available to all, and that's just not the case when it comes to food. It never has been. Rich people often had a large variety of food, while poor people often ate plants and other foots with minimum nutrients. It has always been that way and they definitely wouldn't know enough about sugar to have the same understanding of it in making people fat and unhealthy. Being that most people had manual labor jobs.

My guess is that the diet was mainly based on what they could find to eat vs what they choose to eat. They ate certain things because that's all there was. The large variety of strange food in China makes me think that food shortages were bad enough that "eating anything that moved" became the rule.

 

[Flying Crane]

Refined sugar was probably uncommon because it was an expensive product back then. The process to refine sugar wouldn't have been as extensive as it is now and it wouldn't have been something that poor people would have access to. Like some of the food items today, those items would mainly be eaten by people who had a lot of money. A good example that I can think of is Lobster. Lobster is expensive so many people don't buy it, compared to the people who buy and eat crabs, which can be found in a lot of the middle to lower income areas.

I did a quick search for lobster and the price of lobster is or was $16 per pound. The average weight of a lobster is 10 pounds. There's no person that 's going to buy that whole lobster. And I purchased it to cook with, then there's no way I would sell the total parts, or a dish that would be less than what I bought it for. Blue crab has very little meat in comparison to lobster so you'll find crabs in the poorest of neighbor hoods especially if you live in one of the coastal states.

Oily Dragon is making the assumption that because Sugar was available, that it was available to all, and that's just not the case when it comes to food. It never has been. Rich people often had a large variety of food, while poor people often ate plants and other foots with minimum nutrients. It has always been that way and they definitely wouldn't know enough about sugar to have the same understanding of it in making people fat and unhealthy. Being that most people had manual labor jobs.

My guess is that the diet was mainly based on what they could find to eat vs what they choose to eat. They ate certain things because that's all there was. The large variety of strange food in China makes me think that food shortages were bad enough that "eating anything that moved" became the rule.

Full agreement, especially when we are talking about people who lived “thousands of years ago”.

 

[JowGaWolf]

Full agreement, especially when we are talking about people who lived “thousands of years ago”.

I think people in general have a tendency to project the future onto the past and believe that the same understanding that we have today is the same understanding that decisions were based on hundreds of years in the past. People forget to look at history from the perspective of how life was back then.

I know if we threw Oily Dragon a thousand years into the past in a small Chinese village, the last thing he will be thinking about is the dietary affect of refined sugar on a kung fu stance lol. First thing he's going to think about is "How to get and keep, Shelter, drinkable water, and food followed by clothing." Even if he were to take the knowledge that he has today, the affect of refined sugar on kung fu stances is going to be really low on the list.

Chinese Culture has traditionally eaten insects which is actually the norm globally. It's mainly Americans who think that's weird. So my bet would be that Oily Dragon will be trying to adjust to which insects he's going to eat with or without his rice lol.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

Refined sugar was probably uncommon because it was an expensive product back then.

The colour of your teeth/status of them was a indicator of wealth for a peroid of time in some culture/country i forgot. Sugar was used to discolour/rot it, and if you had rotten/dicoloured it meant you had access to sugar. (which as you have all ready established was a luxary before modernity)

I put the growth of sugar down to, fat being shunned thus needing things for taste and not realsiing it was bad for anyone and making things taste better. Salts sort of the same thing, but salt has been used as a preservative. (which gives it value all to itself if we are talking about food preservation)



Worth noting the reverse has happened as well, some things that were viewed as common items or items every household had, arent anymore. Many things have gone down this road, its just down to supply and demand and whats needed for what. Guano isnt a million pound industry today as it was 200 years ago.


Some of these are weird, others not so much. Fun thing, your body is used to proccessing what ever has been your cultures staple for the last 1,000 or so years. I belive the intestinal track of the countries that had rice as a staple is longer on average than ones that didnt. (i dont know if its related, it was cited like it was)

 

[JowGaWolf]

The colour of your teeth/status of them was a indicator of wealth for a peroid of time in some culture/country i forgot. Sugar was used to discolour/rot it, and if you had rotten/dicoloured it meant you had access to sugar. (which as you have all ready established was a luxary before modernity)

First time hearing this. I didn't know but it falls in line with other cultures who did similar things. Fat meant you were rich. Japanese used to dye their teeth black to signify beauty "Ohaguro" , Inner city hip hop culture had "grillz" with all sorts of stuff on their teeth to show that they were rich.

I belive the intestinal track of the countries that had rice as a staple is longer on average than ones that didnt. (i dont know if its related, it was cited like it was)

I read this too, but I think they eat a different type of rice. I could be wrong. They also ate a lot of other foods, (I think fish) that may have actually balance out any risk if there was any. I read the same thing as well, but this only existed in a certain area of japan that had the rice and fish as a staple.

Rice is good for you but the bleached rice isn't. Bread is good for you, but not the bread made from the white flour. I think a lot of the modern day food risk that we have is due to how we process the food, which "taints" the food in a way. I'm not talking about just the adding of chemicals, I'm also talking other things that are so much adding chemicals as it is removing things. For example, Low Fat milk. About 15 years ago they discovered that the fat in whole milk actually helps you to absorb vitamin D in the body. When they remove the fat, the milk becomes more or less useless in terms of providing the body with Vitamin D.

I know in western cultures we tend to single out one element thinking that it may be healthier to get rid of it. But we never think about the "whole of things" and if that one element plays a vital role and by removing it we break the chain and make the product less beneficial.



.

 

[Deleted member 39746]

First time hearing this. I didn't know but it falls in line with other cultures who did similar things. Fat meant you were rich. Japanese used to dye their teeth black to signify beauty "Ohaguro" , Inner city hip hop culture had "grillz" with all sorts of stuff on their teeth to show that they were rich.

i dont recall where, im going to say newengland/england. At some point. If your teeth were brown it was a status thing. I think they may have done the same thing for tobacco. (but that could just be me assimilating something out of context and incorrectly)


For the second bit, if i recall japan, Noodles and Rice were staples supplimented with fish, whale etc. The growth of buddhism in the region kind of influenced what foods they ate. I dont know how many vegables were grown, or if potatoes etc were. But i think meat has only recently became a staple of theirs.

Apparntly some rice fields have arsnic in them. either natural or man made.


For the milk thing, blame dietrictians in the 70's-80's, thats the peroid it was all about tackling fat and fat is the issue etc. Now days over eating on sugar is more common, and thats put in pretty much everything thats fat free to make it taste well. And as you are more likely yo over eat sugar than fat, the issue is there. Modern eating and diets areally are, damned if you do damned if you dont.

addendum: No one has told me there is a mercuary poisining risk with some fish as well. Damn a lot of food chains are messed up.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Yes, that is the same article that I found. Sugar first refined 2500 years ago. First refined on a large, commercial level in the 1600s on the Brazilian sugar plantations. Prior to Brazil, sugar was uncommon in the human diet. Ergo, no kung fu masters from thousands of years ago would have had enough sugar in the diet to have determined its effects in large quantities.

The article doesn't say sugar was uncommon in the diet before the 1600s, it says almost two thousand years prior, sugar (and of course candy) was already a Silk Road mainstay. Sugar candies were common in China a long time ago. Mass production in Brazil centuries later doesn't mean it was uncommon until 1600, it just means that's when it was available to practically anyone, as opposed to some nations with more exotic fares and their trade partners.

And what I actually said was "That's because Chinese kung fu masters (and their big egos) knew that fighting a lot while on high sucrose diets led to joint annihilation thousands of years ago and this knowledge has been advanced by kung fu sifus for centuries, along with other TCM theories."

See? So where did you get "kung fu masters thousands of years ago"? I said kung fu masters of centuries ago, knew of the dangers of sugars (refined or not) and starches from their own ancient history (because dietary and herbal remedies are much older than kung fu).

What I am pointing out is that joint inflammation due to certain foods is something well known to kung fu medicine, because it is ancient and traditional but evidence-based medicine.

Jow Ga Kuen contains a huge volume of this medicinal herbology devoted to joint health, specifically because of the Wei gong it contains, which should explain my curiosity.

MMA fighters also have to deal with inflammation issues like this, from their own stance and footwork, and some actually rely on the same traditional recipes. So, whatever the differences in structure and dynamics, they still have to combat the same realities about anatomy and the dangers of certain diets.

 

[Oily Dragon]

Drugs like opioids are different. They aren't based on how much money you can make. They are often given to those who have little money and are sold by those who have a lot of money. That has always been the case with drugs that are highly addictive and do harm. You can't compare opioids to food. That would be like saying me saying that everyone has access to Caviar because everyone has access to opioids, which isn't true. Pick any large inner city neighborhood and I guarantee that that it'll be easier to buy opioids in that neighborhood than it is to buy caviar. I guarantee opioids are also cheaper

Certain items are seen by the upper income levels as exclusive to them and the price fits. Poor people probably had access to Cane Sugar with no problem, but can sugar is not the same as Refined Sugar. Refined Sugar is the unhealthy sugar. I'm not sure if you have eaten raw sugar cane before, but I grew up on it. Sugar Cane doesn't taste like refined sugar. Far from it. Even honey is sweeter than cane sugar.

The problem that your article has is that the article doesn't talk about how sugar was used or cooked with

Refined sugar is not the only unhealthy sugar. All sugars can be damaging when consumed in unhealthy quantities or at the wrong times, such as before or after training.

If you don't believe that, try eating nothing but watermelon or cotton candy grapes. It's healthier, but not by much.

But to get back to my point, Jow Ga has an arsenal of herbal, medicinal, and dietary guidelines regarding protecting the body from Yang stancework, which I've seen you do on video. So I'm just intensely curious, one Jow Ga student to another, how it came to be that you questioned their existence.

Remember? Three people said "never heard of a kung fu diet". Wwwwhat?

 

[Oily Dragon]

Full agreement, especially when we are talking about people who lived “thousands of years ago”.

It's not like this stuff isn't well known and historically documented. The eating and medicinal habits of ancient civilizations, I mean. Pretty easy to just pick up a book and learn 3,000 year old folk remedy poultices and tonics that are still used today, because they work.

Ma-huang? You can blow your heart up with that stuff, and many have. How many thousands of years have we known about that root? It turns out people were writing stuff down even that far back. I won't touch the stuff specifically because of the advice of kung fu medicine, before I even learned about it's actual pharmacology.

I never claimed there were "kung fu masters" thousands of years ago, that's someone else's claim. What I did say was the kung fu masters of the last centuries still transmit recipes and guidelines that are thousands of years old, because they improve health and protect and heal the body.

I'm focusing on stancework specifically because of JowGaWolf's videos, because it's on topic. But there are a million tangents we could take. Hit medicine? balms? liniments? Sky's the limit.

 

[Flying Crane]

You did say that they knew about the bad effects of a high sugar diet thousands of years ago, not centuries ago. You did say centuries later in that same sentence. I’ve posted and bolded and underlined the appropriate portion.

Oreos are more addictive than heroin and cocaine, and sugar and alcohol are both anathema to a proper kung fu diet. In fact, eliminating both is mentioned right here in the Shíwù de néngliàng xué! That’s because Chinese kung fu masters (and their big egos) knew that fighting a lot while on high sucrose diets led to joint annihilation thousands of years ago and this knowledge has been advanced by kung fu sifus for centuries, along with other TCM theories.

The article that you posted to stated that throughout the Middle Ages sugar was a rare and expensive spice, and not a mainstay in the diet. I can accept that it might have been more common in Asia than in Europe during that time, the article does not make the distinction if I recall accurately. However, “plentiful” during that time would have still been rare by today’s standards.

I hold to my point: sugar was rare until historically recently, and kung fu masters of thousands of years ago, would not have had a high sugar diet to recognize its detrimental effects.

 

[Flying Crane]

I just realized you stated the same thing again in this recent post. Once again I’ve bolded and underlined the relevant portion. You state that kung fu masters knew this thousands of years ago.

The article doesn't say sugar was uncommon in the diet before the 1600s, it says almost two thousand years prior, sugar (and of course candy) was already a Silk Road mainstay. Sugar candies were common in China a long time ago. Mass production in Brazil centuries later doesn't mean it was uncommon until 1600, it just means that's when it was available to practically anyone, as opposed to some nations with more exotic fares and their trade partners.

And what I actually said was "That's because Chinese kung fu masters (and their big egos) knew that fighting a lot while on high sucrose diets led to joint annihilation thousands of years ago and this knowledge has been advanced by kung fu sifus for centuries, along with other TCM theories."

See? So where did you get "kung fu masters thousands of years ago"? I said kung fu masters of centuries ago, knew of the dangers of sugars (refined or not) and starches from their own ancient history (because dietary and herbal remedies are much older than kung fu).

What I am pointing out is that joint inflammation due to certain foods is something well known to kung fu medicine, because it is ancient and traditional but evidence-based medicine.

Jow Ga Kuen contains a huge volume of this medicinal herbology devoted to joint health, specifically because of the Wei gong it contains, which should explain my curiosity.

MMA fighters also have to deal with inflammation issues like this, from their own stance and footwork, and some actually rely on the same traditional recipes. So, whatever the differences in structure and dynamics, they still have to combat the same realities about anatomy and the dangers of certain diets.