PALEO: Cavemen diet? W.rong

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SteveJWatson

Oddly, since joining MFP and keeping a diary I realise that I am skewed more towards a diet rich in proteins. But I cannot stand the use of the term "paleo diet". It is intellectually weak.

I think people miss that like our ape relatives, humans are omnivorous. If other eating plans prior to paleo were so bad, surely we would have died out long ago? We've been eating the wrong food for the last 10 000 years and have more people on the planet than at any other point. Clearly, not having a "paleo" diet has had little effect on survival of our species.

Humans fit into almost every available habitat on the planet, theres another point. Mankind is the ultimate generalist.

neandermagnon

Oddly, since joining MFP and keeping a diary I realise that I am skewed more towards a diet rich in proteins. But I cannot stand the use of the term "paleo diet". It is intellectually weak.

I think people miss that like our ape relatives, humans are omnivorous. If other eating plans prior to paleo were so bad, surely we would have died out long ago? We've been eating the wrong food for the last 10 000 years and have more people on the planet than at any other point. Clearly, not having a "paleo" diet has had little effect on survival of our species.

That's defintely a good macro view of it. The micro view, however, I suspect plays out a little differently. Not necessarily in terms of survival, but more in terms of general health. I also think the BIG change that has brought this on is the change in agriculture processes. This change is fairly recent and has made a change in how people feel when they eat certain foods.

I can eat anything. However, I notice when I eat processed foods such as breads and pasta and treats liek chocolate, I get a burning pain on the left side of my abdomen. I never noticed this before until I stopped eating it, and then just eat it once in a while. It's very distinct. It's happening right now as I type because I just had pasta for lunch. It's obviously somewhere in my stomache or something. It burns pretty badly for a while. Then it goes away. This never happens when I avoid those foods. So, I dunno. There's soemthing to it. Again, I can eat donuts and pasta all day long. But, this little burning pain is something I never noticed before, but I notice it now, and it's annoying. And, it makes me think, WTH is that all about?

So, to dismiss it seems odd. if you dont' have any issues at all. Then, you don't need to worry abotu it, and then that begs the question, why are you even worried about it or writing about it or giving your opinion about it? Some people, like me, try it just to burn fat or something. It's just something to try. Then, as I discovered, when I tried to go back, I realized that I actually do have an issue. There are other things too, such as my sinuses are always clear now, they never were clear before. Things like that have made a drastic different in my life. So, it's hard to listen to people saying how stupid the diet is, or whatever, when all I find is awesomeness. And, I learned something in just giving it a try.

I wouldn't dismiss it, and there is a strong argument for the idea that some foods are more allergenic and less well tolerated in some comes down to evolution. People whose fairly recent ancestors (like over the last 1000 years) were hunter gatherers are far more likely to be lactose intolerant than those whose ancestors of the same time were dairy farmers or pastoralists. It's also possible that some modern cultivars of some plants are more allergenic than other foods, because they are significantly different to wild forms. Wheat is one such example, and wheat allergy/intolerance is fairly common - but nowhere near universal, i.e. most people can digest it just fine. What's annoying about the wheat haters though, is that bananas are just like wheat in this respect, i.e. modern cultivars are very different to wild varieties, and it's also been used in agriculture for a similar length of time to wheat, and these big differences come from selective breeding. However, the palaeo diet demonises wheat while allowing bananas. And if you go to extremes with this, you'll end up rejecting pretty much all the plant foods in the supermarket because they're all the result of selective breeding and cultivation. - however it remains true that these foods are more allergenic and less well tolerated, and the explanation for that probably is that some people are less well adapted to eating some of these foods than others, and probably it is because the modern cultivars of these were not in the diets of our ancestors.

The logical conclusion of that isn't to demonise these foods, but for people to be aware that if they're having digestive problems, that one of these foods may be the culprit. The difficulty with "going paleo" is that it eliminates a whole bunch of foods together, so if you do get a relief of digestive symptoms or others (the sinus thing sounds like it could have been an allergy) -you don't know which food it was that caused it, and so you end up avoiding all the foods eliminated by the paleo diet, when it actually may have only been necessary to eliminate one or two.

Additionally palaeolithic people had a totally different lifestyle, it's certainly true that modern life is not what we're adapted for and many things about modern life that we take as conveniences aren't really good for us, like being sedentary and not having to walk very far, exposure to artificial light gets the body clock out of synch which leads to less good quality sleep which leads to other problems, even sitting in chairs is not the best position, squatting is better for you, etc.... there are many things like this but it's not realistic or even possible for anyone to try to emulate everything about a palaeo lifestyle (if we really know what that is because the further back you go the more scant the evidence is and the less we know) - but on the other hand, small changes in some of these aspects can make a world of difference to the mental and physical health of some people. So personally I'm not going to write off the concepts behind paleo so easily, i.e. that we're better adapted to the lifestyle of our ancestors than modern life... but I'm also realistic. I eat dairy because I can, I'm going to carry on living in a house but I do try to get outdoors more and exercise. Most of what I do isn't remotely paleo, but my post-workout nutrition is based on the simple principle that as a hunter-gatherer, exercising then not eating means you failed, and your body is probably going to respond to that by preparing for a food shortage (excess hunger later in the day seems to be linked to inadequate post-workout nutrition) while eating a decent meal after exercise is more likely to be taken by the body to mean you succeeded, and it'd better feed the muscles that just made you get that meal.... physiology backs this up to a limited extent, and that's why I always have a good post-workout meal, even if it contains whey isolate protein powder, which isn't remotely paleo. So I don't write off the concept, and I don't consider myself a "paleo dieter", but I do cherry-pick from it (for lifestyle more than diet), which is all that anyone can do unless they decide to actually take off into the wilderness and live as a hunter gatherer (there is a place in Britain where you can learn to do that, and they do 1 week survival courses based on the skills you learn on their courses, that's on my bucket list, but it's not something I plan to do for the long term!!!)

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lizzardsm

bump.

p.s. personally, i think the reason people lose tons of weight off paleo diet is becuase after you've cut out all those grains, etc you're most likely eating at a huge caloric deficit.