We don't know what constitutes a true paleo diet!
Replies
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My ancestral diet included lots of dairy and also rye. I'm Finnish!
And lye= pretzels and bagels. Yumm!
and your ancestors probably worked long long long hours every day, doing physical labor, so needed lots of carbs & fat & protein to keep them going.0 -
I don't care what other people eat.0
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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.
Perhaps I should have said, in the terms of HUMAN evolution, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye --- representative of 142 generations or so (which can be the equivalent of a few weeks or months for certain bacteria). Yes, if stronger selective pressure is exerted, fewer generations will be needed to see the adaptation. But, I don't believe that would be accurate in the terms of homosapiens.
As for obesity, one of the arguments behind the rise, among others, is the increase of grains and specifically refined grains the in the modern diet. For certain people, that increase has created an increase in insulin resistance, which leads to weight gain on such a diet. Then you also have the conditions that are triggered by gluten, or believed to be, like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The research is its infancy, but there is another example of possibly grains leading to obesity -- triggers Hashi's which creates a hypothyroid situation, which slows metabolism and oftentimes triggers insulin resistance = both lead to weight gain. Some research out there estimates something like 80% of hypothyroid conditions go undiagnosed and untreated for 10+years. That's a lot of time to pack on some pounds, even when you are vigilant with your diet and exercise.
I'm not saying this is the only factor, but is arguably one, and it may be significant. And that's why eliminating or greatly reducing certain carbs or grains can be a huge factor in weight loss for some people -- and what some followers of Paleo/Primal will attest to with their own experiences.0 -
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.
But we've had them for hundreds of years or even thousands of years. The obesity epidemic has been around for a few decades. People recently have gotten fat on whole foods diets. The biggest factors are over-consumption and lack of activity.0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?0 -
Very tenuous, all proven science started as belief or theory.
The word you are looking for here is hypothesis. You may believe your hypothesis is correct, but you won't know until you test it. Get enough experimental data together so it forms a cohesive picture, and then you have a theory.
But there's that damn semantics again!0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
Because fiber is good for you?0 -
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.
There have been well documented evolutionary changes in humans in the last 10,000 years, and it doesn't take 6000 generations to see them. It only takes a few generations if the selective pressure is high enough. You seem to keep on conveniently missing that point.
The ability of modern people to digest lactose is one of them. There would have been a high selection pressure in favour of people who can digest lactose, if a population who has already domesticated animals for meat undergoes food shortages. Those who can digest lactose have an entire food source that those who are lactose intolerant can't eat. The result is that people with lactose intolerance die in greater numbers in every food shortage, while those with the lactase persistance mutation survive and breed in greater numbers. And so the subsequent generations get higher and higher numbers of people who can digest lactose. It would only take a few generations for the lactase persistece gene to be fixed in the population, and the more frequent and severe the food shortages, the less time it would take.0 -
A large proportion of the overweight western culture is over weight due to its cheap access to calorie high / nutrient deficient grains and sugars.
But we've had them for hundreds of years or even thousands of years. The obesity epidemic has been around for a few decades. People recently have gotten fat on whole foods diets. The biggest factors are over-consumption and lack of activity.
Absolutely. We do live in a time of abundance so people that can pack on pounds easily are now at a disadvantage whereas they were likely at an advantage 100+ years ago (could survive famine more easily). But, why they're able to pack on pounds so easily is more of an evolutionary/adaptive change issue -- such selection once favored these people, now it doesn't.0 -
Very tenuous, all proven science started as belief or theory.
The word you are looking for here is hypothesis. You may believe your hypothesis is correct, but you won't know until you test it. Get enough experimental data together so it forms a cohesive picture, and then you have a theory.
But there's that damn semantics again!
Sure, and if we were writing a paper on it in a scientific forum, it would be appropriate. But do you think the average joe on this site (or in America at large) really needs to know the difference between hypothesis and theory? Let alone to discuss dietary choices or the Paleo/Primal diet? Really?0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
Because fiber is good for you?
So you don't get fibre from vegetables which are higher in nutritional value?
Do you fancy a second go of answering the question?0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
dafuq? :huh:0 -
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.
Perhaps I should have said, in the terms of HUMAN evolution, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye --- representative of 142 generations or so (which can be the equivalent of a few weeks or months for certain bacteria). Yes, if stronger selective pressure is exerted, fewer generations will be needed to see the adaptation. But, I don't believe that would be accurate in the terms of homosapiens.
As for obesity, one of the arguments behind the rise, among others, is the increase of grains and specifically refined grains the in the modern diet. For certain people, that increase has created an increase in insulin resistance, which leads to weight gain on such a diet. Then you also have the conditions that are triggered by gluten, or believed to be, like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The research is its infancy, but there is another example of possibly grains leading to obesity -- triggers Hashi's which creates a hypothyroid situation, which slows metabolism and oftentimes triggers insulin resistance = both lead to weight gain. Some research out there estimates something like 80% of hypothyroid conditions go undiagnosed and untreated for 10+years. That's a lot of time to pack on some pounds, even when you are vigilant with your diet and exercise.
I'm not saying this is the only factor, but is arguably one, and it may be significant. And that's why eliminating or greatly reducing certain carbs or grains can be a huge factor in weight loss for some people -- and what some followers of Paleo/Primal will attest to with their own experiences.
Generations generally refers to when one reaches breeding age. Even if we take a conservative 20 years old for a human (I'd guess it would have been much younger back in caveman times?) that is 500 generations, not 142. Old people (especially women) tend not to breed as much.
And is there any evidence that increased processed wheat consumption leads to insulin resistance? As far as I am aware, we really don't know what causes insulin resistance. I've heard sugar blamed too, but the link appears mainly correlatory to me, not causal.0 -
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.
Perhaps I should have said, in the terms of HUMAN evolution, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye --- representative of 142 generations or so (which can be the equivalent of a few weeks or months for certain bacteria). Yes, if stronger selective pressure is exerted, fewer generations will be needed to see the adaptation. But, I don't believe that would be accurate in the terms of homosapiens.
As for obesity, one of the arguments behind the rise, among others, is the increase of grains and specifically refined grains the in the modern diet. For certain people, that increase has created an increase in insulin resistance, which leads to weight gain on such a diet. Then you also have the conditions that are triggered by gluten, or believed to be, like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The research is its infancy, but there is another example of possibly grains leading to obesity -- triggers Hashi's which creates a hypothyroid situation, which slows metabolism and oftentimes triggers insulin resistance = both lead to weight gain. Some research out there estimates something like 80% of hypothyroid conditions go undiagnosed and untreated for 10+years. That's a lot of time to pack on some pounds, even when you are vigilant with your diet and exercise.
I'm not saying this is the only factor, but is arguably one, and it may be significant. And that's why eliminating or greatly reducing certain carbs or grains can be a huge factor in weight loss for some people -- and what some followers of Paleo/Primal will attest to with their own experiences.
Hashimoto's runs in my family: My grandmother had it, and she grew up poor in the Depression era. I'm pretty sure she didn't get a surplus of processed grains and sugars to eat.0 -
There have been well documented evolutionary changes in humans in the last 10,000 years, and it doesn't take 6000 generations to see them. It only takes a few generations if the selective pressure is high enough. You seem to keep on conveniently missing that point.
The ability of modern people to digest lactose is one of them. There would have been a high selection pressure in favour of people who can digest lactose, if a population who has already domesticated animals for meat undergoes food shortages. Those who can digest lactose have an entire food source that those who are lactose intolerant can't eat. The result is that people with lactose intolerance die in greater numbers in every food shortage, while those with the lactase persistance mutation survive and breed in greater numbers. And so the subsequent generations get higher and higher numbers of people who can digest lactose. It would only take a few generations for the lactase persistece gene to be fixed in the population, and the more frequent and severe the food shortages, the less time it would take.
I don't disagree with you generally as to the generation level and high pressure as a general principle, just as it applies to the modern diet and humans.
If anything, on much more basic level, considering food abundance for the masses is relatively recent, wouldn't the trait that allowed people to pack on pounds easily from cheap grains have been favored and selected for in the past few thousand years as those people could more easily survive famines? But, those same people are now overweight. So, what was once a good thing is now a bad thing in modern times?0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
dafuq? :huh:
Yeah. I want to know what those grains and sugars are that I can fill up on that my body will make magically disappear! Sounds like a fantastic diet.0 -
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...
So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
1. I'm not angry. actually I'm enjoying the discussion. I generally leave threads before i get angry because if I'm wasting so much time arguing about stupid stuff on the internet, then I have to be enjoying myself or there's no point to it whatsoever. I have enough stress in my life without adding to it by getting upset about what people on the internet are saying
2. your question is missing the point... ANY food in the human diet can be omitted and replaced by other foods. If you're using this as a basis to justify the excessive restriction in the paleo diet, then someone else can use the exact same argument to justify vegan diets. or any diet that omits any food for any reason. It's not a valid reason to omit any food from the diet. If you want to justify telling people to give up foods, you need to prove that there are benefits to doing so.
3. "lost post-digestion" doesn't mean anything. Do you mean pooped down the toilet? Or that your body somehow loses the caloires? If so then that's a good thing in terms of preventing obesity.............. I mean you need to make your mind up on that point. If your body's using more of the calories for fuel and less are going to waste, that means you don't need to eat as much to get all the calories your body needs and you're more likely to overeat and get obese. Most "clean eating" supporters use the argument that foods that require more calories to be broken down, resulting in fewer net calories for the same amount of food, is actually better for you because it prevents obesity. Also, after you clarify exactly what "lost post-digestion" means, please provide peer reviewed articles to prove that this really is happening and it's not the figment of some paleo diet guru's imagination.0 -
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.
Perhaps I should have said, in the terms of HUMAN evolution, 10,000 years is the blink of an eye --- representative of 142 generations or so (which can be the equivalent of a few weeks or months for certain bacteria). Yes, if stronger selective pressure is exerted, fewer generations will be needed to see the adaptation. But, I don't believe that would be accurate in the terms of homosapiens.
As for obesity, one of the arguments behind the rise, among others, is the increase of grains and specifically refined grains the in the modern diet. For certain people, that increase has created an increase in insulin resistance, which leads to weight gain on such a diet. Then you also have the conditions that are triggered by gluten, or believed to be, like Hashimoto's thyroiditis. The research is its infancy, but there is another example of possibly grains leading to obesity -- triggers Hashi's which creates a hypothyroid situation, which slows metabolism and oftentimes triggers insulin resistance = both lead to weight gain. Some research out there estimates something like 80% of hypothyroid conditions go undiagnosed and untreated for 10+years. That's a lot of time to pack on some pounds, even when you are vigilant with your diet and exercise.
I'm not saying this is the only factor, but is arguably one, and it may be significant. And that's why eliminating or greatly reducing certain carbs or grains can be a huge factor in weight loss for some people -- and what some followers of Paleo/Primal will attest to with their own experiences.
Hashimoto's runs in my family: My grandmother had it, and she grew up poor in the Depression era. I'm pretty sure she didn't get a surplus of processed grains and sugars to eat.
Hashimoto's is believed to be genetic, but they're beginning to believe that certain things in the modern diet in particular are triggering it (along with other autoimmune disorders) -- gluten being one of the highly suspected culprits. So, people may have had the disorder/disease for a long time, but just starting to see an increase in major problems with it across certain populations because the triggers are occurring more frequently.0 -
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
Because fiber is good for you?
^^ This
And sugar is eaten because it makes baked goods tasty, that is, sugar, plus wheat flour, plus butter equals *foodgasm*0 -
any paleo diet adherent that owns a refrigerator is a fraud.
:bigsmile:0 -
Very tenuous, all proven science started as belief or theory.
The word you are looking for here is hypothesis. You may believe your hypothesis is correct, but you won't know until you test it. Get enough experimental data together so it forms a cohesive picture, and then you have a theory.
But there's that damn semantics again!
Sure, and if we were writing a paper on it in a scientific forum, it would be appropriate. But do you think the average joe on this site (or in America at large) really needs to know the difference between hypothesis and theory? Let alone to discuss dietary choices or the Paleo/Primal diet? Really?
yes they do, which is why they teach the scientific method in high school. Lack of understanding about science and the scientific method leads to people falling for all the faddy diets and other pseudoscience that goes around. Like people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, or people who think that grain is the cause of obesity....0 -
.So you can't answer my question. A simple no would have spared you keyboard the wrath of your angry fingers.
Another question, I'm wanting to get the most from the calories I consume, so why would I want to eat grains and sugars when anywhere between 10- 20% of the calories are lost post digestion and are not staying in my body for fuel?
Because fiber is good for you?
So you don't get fibre from vegetables which are higher in nutritional value?
Do you fancy a second go of answering the question?
0 -
Generations generally refers to when one reaches breeding age. Even if we take a conservative 20 years old for a human (I'd guess it would have been much younger back in caveman times?) that is 500 generations, not 142. Old people (especially women) tend not to breed as much.
And is there any evidence that increased processed wheat consumption leads to insulin resistance? As far as I am aware, we really don't know what causes insulin resistance. I've heard sugar blamed too, but the link appears mainly correlatory to me, not causal.
Fair points. I don't think they know what it causing insulin resistance either, but they are seeing high corollaries as you state. One of the suggested treatments for it is a low carb diet (with elimination of processed grains) to facilitate weight loss, and sometimes, that helps to reverse the insulin resistance.0 -
And sugar is eaten because it makes baked goods tasty, that is, sugar, plus wheat flour, plus butter equals *foodgasm*
YES0 -
yes they do, which is why they teach the scientific method in high school.0
-
yes they do, which is why they teach the scientific method in high school. Lack of understanding about science and the scientific method leads to people falling for all the faddy diets and other pseudoscience that goes around. Like people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, or people who think that grain is the cause of obesity....
I'm not saying grains is the only, or even the leading cause, of obesity, but I do think there is enough evidence out there that it may be one of the major contributors for certain people -- for those prone to or have insulin resistance, diabetes, Hashimoto's, PCOS, etc.. Whether that's 5% or 50% of the obese population, I don't know. But, the principles behind it appear plausible.0 -
There have been well documented evolutionary changes in humans in the last 10,000 years, and it doesn't take 6000 generations to see them. It only takes a few generations if the selective pressure is high enough. You seem to keep on conveniently missing that point.
The ability of modern people to digest lactose is one of them. There would have been a high selection pressure in favour of people who can digest lactose, if a population who has already domesticated animals for meat undergoes food shortages. Those who can digest lactose have an entire food source that those who are lactose intolerant can't eat. The result is that people with lactose intolerance die in greater numbers in every food shortage, while those with the lactase persistance mutation survive and breed in greater numbers. And so the subsequent generations get higher and higher numbers of people who can digest lactose. It would only take a few generations for the lactase persistece gene to be fixed in the population, and the more frequent and severe the food shortages, the less time it would take.
I don't disagree with you generally as to the generation level and high pressure as a general principle, just as it applies to the modern diet and humans.
If anything, on much more basic level, considering food abundance for the masses is relatively recent, wouldn't the trait that allowed people to pack on pounds easily from cheap grains have been favored and selected for in the past few thousand years as those people could more easily survive famines? But, those same people are now overweight. So, what was once a good thing is now a bad thing in modern times?
Yes absolutely the ability to gain fat to survive famines is something that was adaptive until very recently... but this didn't evolve in the past few thousand years... it's a trait shared by all animals that store fat. But fat is stored when people (or other animals) eat more food than they burn off. There's nothing special about grains that makes people store more fat. Grains don't make people fat. Eating more than you burn off makes people fat.0 -
Very tenuous, all proven science started as belief or theory.
The word you are looking for here is hypothesis. You may believe your hypothesis is correct, but you won't know until you test it. Get enough experimental data together so it forms a cohesive picture, and then you have a theory.
But there's that damn semantics again!
Sure, and if we were writing a paper on it in a scientific forum, it would be appropriate. But do you think the average joe on this site (or in America at large) really needs to know the difference between hypothesis and theory? Let alone to discuss dietary choices or the Paleo/Primal diet? Really?
Absolutely!
The conflation of the popular term "theory" (wild *kitten* guess) with the scientific term "theory" (well supported explanation based on multiple lines of scientific evidence) is another bugaboo of mine. Part of this discussion is about the scientific validity of the Paleo diet, and now we have one of it's chief proponents on here showing he doesn't understand basic scientific terminology, while trying to pretend he does. [If I were really going to be pedantic, I would also have pointed out how hard it is to actually prove anything with science - all you can do is disprove stuff. But I didn't want to go that far ;-)]0 -
yes they do, which is why they teach the scientific method in high school. Lack of understanding about science and the scientific method leads to people falling for all the faddy diets and other pseudoscience that goes around. Like people who refuse to vaccinate their kids, or people who think that grain is the cause of obesity....
I'm not saying grains is the only, or even the leading cause, of obesity, but I do think there is enough evidence out there that it may be one of the major contributors for certain people -- for those prone to or have insulin resistance, diabetes, Hashimoto's, PCOS, etc.. Whether that's 5% or 50% of the obese population, I don't know. But, the principles behind it appear plausible.
you are totally hung up on grains................ NO, people have been eating grains in large quantities since the mesolithic era at least, palaeolithic people ate them too (mesolithic people didn''t suddenly start storing large quantities of food they'd never eaten before)..... diabetes, obesity epidemics etc didn't affect the vast majority of grain eating peoples for the vast majority of the time people have been eating a lot of grain, and haven't had these problems. Grains are not the cause of these problems. there isn't even a correlation going on here....
what's different now is people are sedentary and eat more than they burn off. In the past, people did much more physical labour (e.g. tilling the land to grow wheat, working in paddy fields growing rice) and couldn't get hold of food in sufficient quantities to get obese.0 -
Generations generally refers to when one reaches breeding age. Even if we take a conservative 20 years old for a human (I'd guess it would have been much younger back in caveman times?) that is 500 generations, not 142. Old people (especially women) tend not to breed as much.
And is there any evidence that increased processed wheat consumption leads to insulin resistance? As far as I am aware, we really don't know what causes insulin resistance. I've heard sugar blamed too, but the link appears mainly correlatory to me, not causal.
Fair points. I don't think they know what it causing insulin resistance either, but they are seeing high corollaries as you state. One of the suggested treatments for it is a low carb diet (with elimination of processed grains) to facilitate weight loss, and sometimes, that helps to reverse the insulin resistance.
Just as an aside really, but there is also a paper that shows a diet of 75% carbs can reverse the signs of pre-diabetes as well. I personally manage mine with moderate carbs, spread out throughout the day, and exercise.0
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