We don't know what constitutes a true paleo diet!

tennisdude2004

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

If on this diet you no longer crave nutrient deficit food, what's restrictive about it. Name one food that I cannot eat which provides the same or if not more nutrients that I cannot get from food which is recommended on the diet?

richardheath

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

Your first comment is a bit confusing. I think the article states quite clearly that as a human race we've evolved to eat pretty much anything that moves.

Have a re-read????

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

tennisdude2004

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

Your first comment is a bit confusing. I think the article states quite clearly that as a human race we've evolved to eat pretty much anything that moves.

Have a re-read????

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

It's a short blog, maybe you need to do a bit more in depth research into primal, so you can comment accurately????

lindsey1979

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

neandermagnon

Doesn't arguing semantics get boring?

It's not semantics.

I've never seen an artcile or book on the "paleo" diet written by anyone who has accurate, up to date knowledge of palaeoanthropology. the better articles, their info is way out of date. Like decades out of date. The worst ones they don't seem to even be aware that humans didn't co-exist with dinosaurs and whose ideas of "cavemen" seem to come from cartoons.

Why follow a diet that claims to be something, when the people who are making the diet up know nothing about the something that it's claimed to be?

It is semantics. They chose a name that has a pop culture reference to the general diet -- meat, veggies, fruits, seeds, etc. -- like what a "caveman" would eat through a hunter gatherer lifestyle. It's not supposed to be an all inclusive statement on the diet, but just a catch phrase that gets the 50,000 ft view right. Beyond that, you need to look into the diets closer for further details -- why they avoid legumes or love coconut oil. Primal or more permissive Paleo will also include modern day foods that mimic the food profile of those major groups or are beneficial for other reasons (e.g. dairy). "Cavemen" didn't live on just one area of the earth, so there is a good deal of variation.

but that is the issue. the diet *doesn't* resemble palaeolithic diets!! Palaeolithic people ate legumes and didn't have the technology to extract oil from anything, coconuts or not. Not even mechanical extraction. Why would I need to look into the diets further when thus far they're based on a complete pseudoscience?

It doesn't even get the 50,000 foot view right.

Yes absolutely there are many different palaeolithic diets, the palaeolithic era includes several different species of human, the earliest of whom relied more on scavenging meat than actual hunting. But none of them resemble the "paleo" diet!!

There are tons of things in the modern world that name such things accordingly. Do you refuse to drive cars that have such inaccurate names? The Murano is an SUV by Nissan named after an island in Italy off of Venice where cars aren't even driven/allowed. How can they expect ANYONE to drive one being named as such?!!!

It's nothing like naming a car. No-one expects car names to do anything other than sound expensive and a bit exotic.

The HCG diet involves taking HCG. The alli diet involves taking alli. the low carb diet involves eating low carb. the low fat diet involves eating low fat. the weight watchers diet is for people who want to watch their weight. the slimfast diet is for people who want to slim fast. the mediterannean diet is based on the actual diets of actual mediterannean people. intermittant fasting is a diet for people who fast intermittently. yet the paleo diet is just a fancy name and it doesn't matter that it doesn't remotely resemble any actual palaeolithic diets? That isn't misleading?

btw semantics are important. you call things by what name they're known by. If I start calling my sofa a flower garden, then I'm going to confuse the heck out of everyone when I talk about my flower garden, when really I mean my sofa.... I mean FFS what's the point of even having a language if people can just call things whatever and change the definitions of words on a whim or totally misuse words to sell a faddy diet based on pseudoscience and incorrect information?

Holly_Roman_Empire

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

You yourself said it's not scientifically based on what a paleolithic man ate. What else is there to base it on? The opposite of science/facts is opinion/belief.

lindsey1979

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

No. Pseudoscience irritates me.

As to the diet, eat what you want. I'm sure it isn't unhealthy, when done well (but then "done well" can be applied to any diet). But I do think Paleo is unsustainable for most people and not *required* for good health.

And if rhetoric bores you, what are you doing on a discussion board?

I'm on a discussion board, not for rhetoric, but for the honest exchange of ideas -- and hopefully to get a little enlightenment from the process. I'm just shocked by the number of people I've encountered in my short time here that have been such Paleo/Primal bashers, without much discussion of the underlying principles.

As for sustainability, if you're talking strict Paleo, I think that likely would be difficult for many people. But more permissive Paleo or Primal seems pretty easy to me -- and I think if you're one of those people that sees immense benefits from it, it's even easier since you feel so much better. I also agree that it's not *required* for good health. I think it's one path up the mountain, and a legitimate one, just not the only path up the mountain.

lindsey1979

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

You yourself said it's not scientifically based on what a paleolithic man ate. What else is there to base it on? The opposite of science/facts is opinion/belief.

Just because it's not scientifically based on what paleolithic man ate, doesn't mean that there are not solid scientific principles for the components of the diet -- which there are. A few examples are research on casein, lactose, lectins, gluten, omega 3-6 balance, etc. From scientific facts, you draw conclusions, opinions and possible beliefs, depending on how you choose to define that. They are not mutually exclusive.

cwolfman13

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

If on this diet you no longer crave nutrient deficit food, what's restrictive about it. Name one food that I cannot eat which provides the same or if not more nutrients that I cannot get from food which is recommended on the diet?

I happen to think that legumes are pretty good for you...yet they are the devil according to paleo.

neandermagnon

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

Your first comment is a bit confusing. I think the article states quite clearly that as a human race we've evolved to eat pretty much anything that moves.

Have a re-read????

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

^^^ this, because the human evolutionary niche is adapatability and the ability to use technology to extract more and better quality food out of the environment. agriculture is an example that.

and natural selection didn't stop when we evolved vertical foreheads and pointy chins. evolution is an ongoing process and over the last 10,000 years or so, populations have adapted to various post-neolithic diets, e.g. dairy farming/herding populations have evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. Humans are dietary generalists, not specialists. Comparing us to pandas is pointless (although if you want a hominin who ate a high volume of low quality plant food, check out Australopithecus boisei, not our ancestor, a side branch, but very interesting.)

QuietBloom

I'm a scientist. Bad labelling just gets to me the way slightly crooked pictures or mismatched socks might irritate other people. A label means a lot. If there is a more accurate term available to describe something, why not use it?

Agreed. Lindsey (however) also a scientist, thinks we are being silly to care about accurate labeling.

FlaxMilk

Edit

lindsey1979

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

^^^ this, because the human evolutionary niche is adapatability and the ability to use technology to extract more and better quality food out of the environment. agriculture is an example that.

and natural selection didn't stop when we evolved vertical foreheads and pointy chins. evolution is an ongoing process and over the last 10,000 years or so, populations have adapted to various post-neolithic diets, e.g. dairy farming/herding populations have evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. Humans are dietary generalists, not specialists. Comparing us to pandas is pointless (although if you want a hominin who ate a high volume of low quality plant food, check out Australopithecus boisei, not our ancestor, a side branch, but very interesting.)

True, true. But in the terms of evolution, natural selection and adaptation, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye, right?

So, doesn't it also make sense that there are large swaths of our population that have not evolved/adapted to optimally digest certain things -- and that's in part why where seeing the rise of obesity, food sensitivities/allergies/intolerances to gluten, lactose, casein, lectins, etc.? And by eliminating those things from your diet, such a person may feel much better and operate better?

In overgeneralized terms, I think that's the idea behind Paleo/Primal.

neandermagnon

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

You yourself said it's not scientifically based on what a paleolithic man ate. What else is there to base it on? The opposite of science/facts is opinion/belief.

Just because it's not scientifically based on what paleolithic man ate, doesn't mean that there are not solid scientific principles for the components of the diet -- which there are. A few examples are research on casein, lactose, lectins, gluten, omega 3-6 balance, etc. From scientific facts, you draw conclusions, opinions and possible beliefs, depending on how you choose to define that. They are not mutually exclusive.

So what about the other stuff?? It claims to be based on what palaeolithic people ate............. but it's not, and the people making that claim know nothing about palaeoanthropology.

and a lot of what i've read from paleo diet advocates on subjects such as lactose are *not* based in solid scientific principles. for example the way they ignore the fact that dairy farming/herding populations have in the last 10,000 years evolved the ability to digest lactose. There's no health benefits for people who have the lactase persistence gene to avoid lactose. Yes of course avoid it if you're lactose intolerant, but if you're not, then dairy products are an excellent source of protein, calcium, fat soluble vitamins and a bunch of other stuff. What benefit is there to someone like myself, who is descended from dairy farmers and who can digest lactose just fine, from giving up dairy products? the answer is none whatsoever. Yeah so what if I can get those nutrients from other foods. why should I go to the trouble when dairy isn't making me ill and i can get all that nutrition from it?

_John_

ascinine...

I give this argument a 7, but her ascinine...

lindsey1979

I'm a scientist. Bad labelling just gets to me the way slightly crooked pictures or mismatched socks might irritate other people. A label means a lot. If there is a more accurate term available to describe something, why not use it?

Agreed. Lindsey (however) also a scientist, thinks we are being silly to care about accurate labeling.

I'm not saying you're silly, but to put it in perspective. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

If you have issues with the underlying premises, call those out and state why. But to attack a pop culture label as your principal bugaboo seems silly to me, rather than the underlying principles or science (or lack thereof).

lindsey1979

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

You yourself said it's not scientifically based on what a paleolithic man ate. What else is there to base it on? The opposite of science/facts is opinion/belief.

Just because it's not scientifically based on what paleolithic man ate, doesn't mean that there are not solid scientific principles for the components of the diet -- which there are. A few examples are research on casein, lactose, lectins, gluten, omega 3-6 balance, etc. From scientific facts, you draw conclusions, opinions and possible beliefs, depending on how you choose to define that. They are not mutually exclusive.

So what about the other stuff?? It claims to be based on what palaeolithic people ate............. but it's not, and the people making that claim know nothing about palaeoanthropology.

and a lot of what i've read from paleo diet advocates on subjects such as lactose are *not* based in solid scientific principles. for example the way they ignore the fact that dairy farming/herding populations have in the last 10,000 years evolved the ability to digest lactose. There's no health benefits for people who have the lactase persistence gene to avoid lactose. Yes of course avoid it if you're lactose intolerant, but if you're not, then dairy products are an excellent source of protein, calcium, fat soluble vitamins and a bunch of other stuff. What benefit is there to someone like myself, who is descended from dairy farmers and who can digest lactose just fine, from giving up dairy products? the answer is none whatsoever. Yeah so what if I can get those nutrients from other foods. why should I go to the trouble when dairy isn't making me ill and i can get all that nutrition from it?

And to that, I'd say, try one of the more permissive versions of Paleo like Primal, which does permit dairy -- for the exact reasons you laid out.

QuietBloom

True "paleo" diet?

Hmm.

Well, how about the Iceman- 5,000 years old?

His stomach was stuffed with fatty goat meat. Some extra stuff too, but mainly goat meat.

Otzi also had grains in his his intestines.

FlaxMilk

True "paleo" diet?

Hmm.

Well, how about the Iceman- 5,000 years old?

His stomach was stuffed with fatty goat meat. Some extra stuff too, but mainly goat meat.

Otzi also had grains in his his intestines.

He probably ate breakfast.

His mistake ...

QuietBloom

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

i don't think anyone cares that you are bored.

the universe does not revolve around you.

:drinker:

likitisplit

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

^^^ this, because the human evolutionary niche is adapatability and the ability to use technology to extract more and better quality food out of the environment. agriculture is an example that.

and natural selection didn't stop when we evolved vertical foreheads and pointy chins. evolution is an ongoing process and over the last 10,000 years or so, populations have adapted to various post-neolithic diets, e.g. dairy farming/herding populations have evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. Humans are dietary generalists, not specialists. Comparing us to pandas is pointless (although if you want a hominin who ate a high volume of low quality plant food, check out Australopithecus boisei, not our ancestor, a side branch, but very interesting.)

True, true. But in the terms of evolution, natural selection and adaptation, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye, right?

Nope. The frequency of alleles in an environment can alter in a heartbeat in an evolutionary bottleneck. As long as a trait is genetically driven and selected for in an environment, it can change. I mean, look at all of the new plants that we've bred. Look at peppered moths. Look at the influenzas that used to kill us a couple of hundred year ago.

neandermagnon

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

^^^ this, because the human evolutionary niche is adapatability and the ability to use technology to extract more and better quality food out of the environment. agriculture is an example that.

and natural selection didn't stop when we evolved vertical foreheads and pointy chins. evolution is an ongoing process and over the last 10,000 years or so, populations have adapted to various post-neolithic diets, e.g. dairy farming/herding populations have evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. Humans are dietary generalists, not specialists. Comparing us to pandas is pointless (although if you want a hominin who ate a high volume of low quality plant food, check out Australopithecus boisei, not our ancestor, a side branch, but very interesting.)

True, true. But in the terms of evolution, natural selection and adaptation, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye, right?

So, doesn't it also make sense that there are large swaths of our population that have not evolved/adapted to optimally digest certain things -- and that's in part why where seeing the rise of obesity, food sensitivities/allergies/intolerances to gluten, lactose, casein, lectins, etc.? And by eliminating those things from your diet, such a person may feel much better and operate better?

In overgeneralized terms, I think that's the idea behind Paleo/Primal.

10,000 years isn't "the blink of an eye" in evolutionary terms - bacteria can evolve resistance to a specific antibiotic in a matter of weeks. How fast evolution happens depends on the degree of selective pressure. New traits can become fixed in populations in a few generations; undesirable traits can be lost in just a few generations, if the selection pressure is strong enough.

Yes lots of people are lactose intolerant, but that explains why they get sick when they drink milk. It doesn't explain obesity. Why would a lactose intolerant person get obese from drinking milk?

Obesity is not caused by the lack of an enzyme to digest lactose, or any other food. It's caused by people being sedentary and eating too much. Yes people with undiagnosed food intolerances and allergies will feel better if they give them up, but you don't need the paleo diet to explain it, and additionally many foods that palaeolithic people ate can be allergenic, e.g. shellfish (you want evidence that palaeolithic people ate shellfish check out some of the archaeological sites in South Africa, I think it's pinacle point, the name of the site i'm thinking of)

Additionally, the obesity epidemic started around 50 years ago. Dairy has been in the human diet for thousands of years. wheat for 10,000 years, the neolithic era dates back to around 10,000 years ago. Neolithic people were not obese. Bronze age people were not obese, Iron age people were not obese. Mediaeval people were not obese.... yep some exceptions like King Henry VIII... but he ate too much and didn't do any exercise because he was a king and had people to give him all the food he wanted. But all these people ate food that contains gluten, lactose, caesin and the rest.... and only modern people have an obesity epidemic

If you want to explain why modern people are obese and palaeolithic people were not, then it's because they had to exert themselves to get food before they could eat, while modern people can order pizza through their living room window without even leaving the sofa, if they so desire. Even though most are not quite that sedentary, people generally drive their cars to the supermarket to get food, and most people are wealthy enough to buy food in the quantities that they want. People in previous eras had to do a LOT more physical labour, and it was hard for ordinary people to get enough food to eat.

lindsey1979

True, true. But in the terms of evolution, natural selection and adaptation, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye, right?

Nope. The frequency of alleles in an environment can alter in a heartbeat in an evolutionary bottleneck. As long as a trait is genetically driven and selected for in an environment, it can change. I mean, look at all of the new plants that we've bred. Look at peppered moths. Look at the influenzas that used to kill us a couple of hundred year ago.

True, but humans generally have not undergone forced selective breeding like you see in the new plant breeds and the difference in lifespan of humans and peppered moths are significant. The adult life span of peppered moths is something like 1-2 weeks and they live for a total of 60 days, right? Whereas the adult life span for humans is 55+ years and we live 70+ years (absent disease or accident)? So the number of generations that would turn over in 100 years for pepper moths is approximately 6,000. The same number of generations turn over for humans would be over 46,000 years. Gotta compare apples to apples.

tennisdude2004

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

See, your thinking logically, and this diet is about a belief, not logic.......basically whatever you say will make no difference whatsoever.

Why do you think it's based on a belief? I've seen a few people say that and I just don't understand what the basis is for that, unless you mean belief = reasoned conclusion.

You yourself said it's not scientifically based on what a paleolithic man ate. What else is there to base it on? The opposite of science/facts is opinion/belief.

Very tenuous, all proven science started as belief or theory.

QuietBloom

I'm a scientist. Bad labelling just gets to me the way slightly crooked pictures or mismatched socks might irritate other people. A label means a lot. If there is a more accurate term available to describe something, why not use it?

Agreed. Lindsey (however) also a scientist, thinks we are being silly to care about accurate labeling.

I'm not saying you're silly, but to put it in perspective. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

If you have issues with the underlying premises, call those out and state why. But to attack a pop culture label as your principal bugaboo seems silly to me, rather than the underlying principles or science (or lack thereof).

It's not my principle bugaboo, really. It's the amount of time adherents have spent thinking about whether or not Grok ate this that or the other that blows my mind. It appears that Mark Sisson is at least open to the fact that we really can't know exactly what Grok or Grokette ate. So he bases his decisions to eat this that or the other on psuedoscience as far as I can tell. For instance, the idea that legumes are 'anti-nutrients' is pretty bizarre IMO.

Eat however you want to eat. I don't have a problem with it. But I am agreeing with neandermagnon that labels are important. And by labelling a diet 'Paleo' you are pushing the idea that those who eat in a Paleo manner are somehow eating what paleolithic peoples ate. It just doesn't follow.

tennisdude2004

And anything that doesn't move.

Sorry if that first bit was confusing. I meant yes, he mentions it, but then goes on to ignore it. We are omnivores. We eat all the foodz. Trying to go from there to the evolutionary mis-match is a huge leap.

^^^ this, because the human evolutionary niche is adapatability and the ability to use technology to extract more and better quality food out of the environment. agriculture is an example that.

and natural selection didn't stop when we evolved vertical foreheads and pointy chins. evolution is an ongoing process and over the last 10,000 years or so, populations have adapted to various post-neolithic diets, e.g. dairy farming/herding populations have evolved the ability to digest lactose as adults. Humans are dietary generalists, not specialists. Comparing us to pandas is pointless (although if you want a hominin who ate a high volume of low quality plant food, check out Australopithecus boisei, not our ancestor, a side branch, but very interesting.)

True, true. But in the terms of evolution, natural selection and adaptation, 10,000 years is a blink of an eye, right?

So, doesn't it also make sense that there are large swaths of our population that have not evolved/adapted to optimally digest certain things -- and that's in part why where seeing the rise of obesity, food sensitivities/allergies/intolerances to gluten, lactose, casein, lectins, etc.? And by eliminating those things from your diet, such a person may feel much better and operate better?

In overgeneralized terms, I think that's the idea behind Paleo/Primal.

10,000 years isn't "the blink of an eye" in evolutionary terms - bacteria can evolve resistance to a specific antibiotic in a matter of weeks. How fast evolution happens depends on the degree of selective pressure. New traits can become fixed in populations in a few generations; undesirable traits can be lost in just a few generations, if the selection pressure is strong enough.

Yes lots of people are lactose intolerant, but that explains why they get sick when they drink milk. It doesn't explain obesity. Why would a lactose intolerant person get obese from drinking milk?

Obesity is not caused by the lack of an enzyme to digest lactose, or any other food. It's caused by people being sedentary and eating too much. Yes people with undiagnosed food intolerances and allergies will feel better if they give them up, but you don't need the paleo diet to explain it, and additionally many foods that palaeolithic people ate can be allergenic, e.g. shellfish (you want evidence that palaeolithic people ate shellfish check out some of the archaeological sites in South Africa, I think it's pinacle point, the name of the site i'm thinking of)

Additionally, the obesity epidemic started around 50 years ago. Dairy has been in the human diet for thousands of years. wheat for 10,000 years, the neolithic era dates back to around 10,000 years ago. Neolithic people were not obese. Bronze age people were not obese, Iron age people were not obese. Mediaeval people were not obese.... yep some exceptions like King Henry VIII... but he ate too much and didn't do any exercise because he was a king and had people to give him all the food he wanted. But all these people ate food that contains gluten, lactose, caesin and the rest.... and only modern people have an obesity epidemic

If you want to explain why modern people are obese and palaeolithic people were not, then it's because they had to exert themselves to get food before they could eat, while modern people can order pizza through their living room window without even leaving the sofa, if they so desire. Even though most are not quite that sedentary, people generally drive their cars to the supermarket to get food, and most people are wealthy enough to buy food in the quantities that they want. People in previous eras had to do a LOT more physical labour, and it was hard for ordinary people to get enough food to eat.

A large proportion of the overweight western culture is over weight due to its cheap access to calorie high / nutrient deficient grains and sugars.

kgeyser

True "paleo" diet?

Hmm.

Well, how about the Iceman- 5,000 years old?

His stomach was stuffed with fatty goat meat. Some extra stuff too, but mainly goat meat.

Otzi also had grains in his his intestines.

Perhaps he was bulking. We should ask him to open his diary.

tennisdude2004

I'm a scientist. Bad labelling just gets to me the way slightly crooked pictures or mismatched socks might irritate other people. A label means a lot. If there is a more accurate term available to describe something, why not use it?

Agreed. Lindsey (however) also a scientist, thinks we are being silly to care about accurate labeling.

I'm not saying you're silly, but to put it in perspective. Don't throw the baby out with the bath water.

If you have issues with the underlying premises, call those out and state why. But to attack a pop culture label as your principal bugaboo seems silly to me, rather than the underlying principles or science (or lack thereof).

It's not my principle bugaboo, really. It's the amount of time adherents have spent thinking about whether or not Grok ate this that or the other that blows my mind. It appears that Mark Sisson is at least open to the fact that we really can't know exactly what Grok or Grokette ate. So he bases his decisions to eat this that or the other on psuedoscience as far as I can tell. For instance, the idea that legumes are 'anti-nutrients' is pretty bizarre IMO.

Eat however you want to eat. I don't have a problem with it. But I am agreeing with neandermagnon that labels are important. And by labelling a diet 'Paleo' you are pushing the idea that those who eat in a Paleo manner are somehow eating what paleolithic peoples ate. It just doesn't follow.

He based it on probably what has worked for him and others he has worked with. And his research on how the body reacts and processes macro and micro nutrients.

Grok, primal is the marketing side of it. Just like calorie counting and IIFYM.

tennisdude2004

True "paleo" diet?

Hmm.

Well, how about the Iceman- 5,000 years old?

His stomach was stuffed with fatty goat meat. Some extra stuff too, but mainly goat meat.

Otzi also had grains in his his intestines.

Perhaps he was bulking. We should ask him to open his diary.

Maybe the goat had eaten the grain?

neandermagnon

What the article from the OP fails to mention --- or rather, just skips over willy nilly --- is that humans evolved to eat anything edible. Some societies had to go to great lengths to make certain things edible. But they ate whatever they could, whenever they could. In short, we evolved to be omnivores.


From the article:

Let’s say that natural selection adapts an organism to a given environment by selecting for an advantageous trait. What if the environment shifts, as they do, and the trait the original environment selected no longer works the same way? This is an evolutionary mismatch. It can happen with any environmental shift, like a change in diet.

Yes, this is correct in a strict sense. Things like diet can wreak havoc on a population. Look at Pandas or Polar bears. Highly specialized creatures whose habitats and food sources are being threatened, leaving them close to extinction. But we aren't like that. Our greatest specialization is our adaptability. Look at all the food sources we can gain nutrients from; at all the humans who live in extreme climates who eat wildly different foods to others in different extreme climates. Yet both groups manage to survive.

Its this basic misapplication of evolutionary science to try and support this flawed premise that I find most irritating. And this general tenant - we didn't evolve to eat X - that underlies the whole paleo thing. Take away the pseudoscience and you are left with just another fad diet.

So, just want to make sure I understand, you're irritated with the diet because of its incorrect labeling premise? Do you have anything to comment on as to the diet itself?

Maybe, it's just me, but rhetoric bores me.

If you want my opinion on the diet itself, it's unnecessarily restrictive. Nothing wrong with avoiding foods that are actually making you ill, but a lot of people doing paleo are not made ill by those foods and avoiding them has no health benefit for them, but they're scared into avoiding them by people who tell them "cavemen" didn't eat them, even though the people telling them have no idea about anything in palaeoanthropology, never mind what foods cavepeople ate .................. the result is you have people avoiding foods under the mistaken belief that those foods are bad for them, because they've been told palaeolithic people didn't eat them by people who don't have the first idea what palaeolithic people actually ate............................ you don't see a problem there??

If on this diet you no longer crave nutrient deficit food, what's restrictive about it. Name one food that I cannot eat which provides the same or if not more nutrients that I cannot get from food which is recommended on the diet?

that's beside the point, because there's no *benefit* to cutting out those foods. You can name *any* food that humans eat, and replace it with other foods that contain the same nutrients. That's what vegans do. they omit meat and find other foods that contain the same nutrients. Does that mean that everyone should give up meat? Just because you *can* get all your nutrition from non-meat sources?

The question needs to be "what are the health benefits in giving up this food?" - if the answer to that question is "none" then there's no reason to give it up, even if you could get the same nutrients from other foods.

If you personally don't crave non paleo foods when eating paleo, then good for you. Your experience isn't shared by everyone. If someone is craving non-paleo foods, and there's no health benefit in them avoiding those foods (i.e. they don't have an actual intolerance to them) then what on earth is the benefit of them stoically avoiding them when they could eat them and still be just as healthy, or possibly even slightly better health, as they'd avoid the stress caused to them by avoiding foods that they're craving. This stress is worth if if the food really is making you ill, but if it's not.... well it's a hiding to nothing...