Paelo Dieters how is your colon???

Potatoes are allowed on a primal diet, but not paleo.

"Prima diet" is a marketing term owned by a certain supplement-selling website jockey. It has no technical or scientific meaning, and the definition has changed over the years, depending on which way the wind was blowing through the supplement-seller's ears.

Not really. While some of the details have changed (is honey primal? Depends on when you ask, since he has changed his stance on things like that; from what I've seen, though, the things he's changed on are "grey" areas, where the verdict could go either way, and when he does change, he points out the research stating why), the main point has maintained the same - eat plants and animals, limit carbohydrate intake in proportion to how fit and active you are, consume limited amounts of dairy (preferably raw, if you can) if your body tolerates it. If you know of any major parts that he's changed on, I'd be interested in seeing them.

Palaeolithic people ate honey. It's not that difficult to get hold of if you can get past the bees. You could smoke out a beehive with middle palaeolithic technology. Additionally, plenty of modern hunter-gatherer tribes not only eat honey, they go to extreme and sometimes crazy lengths to get it, because they really really like the taste of sweet things. Also, they tend to eat the honey with the bee larvae inside it. It's very nutritious... excellent source of carbs and protein all in one.

This is just more evidence that the "paleo diet" is not based on any actual research into palaeoanthropology, otherwise there'd be no "grey area" with regards to honey.

That would require "the paleo diet" to be wholly based on paleoanthropology. It's not, though, and I think that's what a lot of people who haven't researched it much often forget.

Really, call it something else!! what you're doing is about as logical as following a vegetarian diet, then re-defining meat as vegetables and saying that you're allowed to eat meat because it counts as vegetables. You're basically saying you follow the "paleo diet" then redefining "paleo" as whatever the heck you want to consider to be paleo, whether it actually is or is not. "palaeolithic" already has a definition, quite a precise one in fact, it refers to a stage of human cultural evolution where humans used stone tools as their main/dominant technology. "palaelolithic diet" means the diet of palaeolithic people. You can't just come along and totally redefine it with your stuff about avoiding carbohydrates. Palaeolithic people didn't avoid carbohydrates, they actively sought them out and ate as many as they could get their hands on.

If you want to emulate a paleolithic diet in modern times, the nearest you can get to it would be to take to the countryside armed with nothing more high-tech than flint, and hunt and gather your own food. All the stuff you said about carbohydrates and leaky gut has only the vaguest connection with paleo diets in that the alleles that code for lactose intolerance and possibly some other intolerances to post-agricultural foods are more common in populations that have been hunter-gatherers until recently. But as I said before, you don't need a degree in palaeoanthopology to figure out that if a food irritates your colon it's better not to eat it. Simply avoid the foods that you're allergic and/or intolerant to, and leave the "paleo" thing out of it, because it just makes the whole diet an utter farce and completely ridiculous, when if you called it something like the "avoiding foods that people are commonly allergic to" you'd probably get a whole lot more respect and a lot fewer haters and you wouldn't get into arguments like this with people who have actually studied palaeoanthropology.

If you have a better name (that isn't derogatory) for "a framework for eating and living that is based partially on what we know about what our pre-neolithic ancestors ate and the types of conditions they lived in and partially on what we've learned harms us or helps us; that goes against a lot of what conventional wisdom says is "healthy" despite a large and growing body of evidence that says otherwise," then by all means, suggest it. I'm sure many people would be open to it. A big reason it's used is because the idea of "hey, let's go back to eating what our ancestors ate before agriculture" can be more or less traced back to a book written circa 1950 with a name along the lines of "The Caveman Diet," thus the theme in names. It's more or less stuck, despite having evolved beyond simply recreating an upper paleolithic diet to the best of our abilities.

It's actually more like how the term vegetarian has evolved. There was a time when it actually meant what vegan means now, but few modern vegetarians are vegan, and most are some combination of lacto, ovo, and/or pescaterian (which is ironically considered vegetarian, though it did almost exactly what you've accused Paleo of doing).

So... They wised up and stopped being paleo?

Sort of like how I discovered bread and pasta at night helps me combat grain free diet induced insomnia? Or that counting calories works because there is no such thing as a prefect model but there are useful ones?

No, and now you're just arguing for arguing's sake. You also seem to have deliberately ignored what I said. I and the people I know that follow Paleo recognize that there is no one size fits all solution (that's why there's Cordain's Paleo, and Primal, and Whole 30, and AIP and a dozen other variations). Paleo works for us. It's cured our acid reflux, cured our insomnia, cleared our skin, lowered our fasting insulin, brought us back from a pre-diabetic state, allowed us to lose weight when a diet similar in calories but more grain-based didn't (and Paleo did so without us feeling starved or deprived), and drastically improved our cholesterol numbers. If you found something that does the same for you, more power to you.

If you have a better name (that isn't derogatory) for "a framework for eating and living that is based partially on what we know about what our pre-neolithic ancestors ate and the types of conditions they lived in and partially on what we've learned harms us or helps us; that goes against a lot of what conventional wisdom says is "healthy" despite a large and growing body of evidence that says otherwise," then by all means, suggest it. I'm sure many people would be open to it. A big reason it's used is because the idea of "hey, let's go back to eating what our ancestors ate before agriculture" can be more or less traced back to a book written circa 1950 with a name along the lines of "The Caveman Diet," thus the theme in names. It's more or less stuck, despite having evolved beyond simply recreating an upper paleolithic diet to the best of our abilities.

It's actually more like how the term vegetarian has evolved. There was a time when it actually meant what vegan means now, but few modern vegetarians are vegan, and most are some combination of lacto, ovo, and/or pescaterian (which is ironically considered vegetarian, though it did almost exactly what you've accused Paleo of doing).

Um, Christianity IS a specific religion.

Since we are unique in our ability to run very long distances without stopping...

Really, call it something else!!

Well they did, that's where the equally undefinable "Primal" came from.

But then you have clowns like Mark Sisson telling people "Primal" means its ok to drop a stick of butter in your morning coffee because, you know, your body will "self regulate" your caloric intake if you eat "whole foods" prepared "primally".

Never mind that neither butter nor coffee fit any reasonable definition of "whole food" or "primally prepared".

It's all a fad diet, and mostly the forums of those places are filled with people desperately looking for a silver bullet. Their forums are filled with people who don't understand why they aren't losing weight when "calories don't matter" and they're eating a pound of bacon for breakfast.

That doesn't mean some folks can't find value in some of the concepts - just like with any fad diet - but it is still a fad diet.

Arguing for its own sake is not my thing, sorry.

I am responding to your "highly motivated" form of reasoning. And your ever-broadening definition which belies a complete lack of any rational unifying concept.

I'd say the only Stone Age thing going on there is your tribalism, reflected in you use of the first person plural collective pronouns.

Actually, I was only referring to myself and my friends, in which case using "we" is entirely appropriate. And yes, we (ie - my friends and I) really have seen such benefits. However, on looking back, I see that I had made mention of my friends a few posts back and not in this last one, so I apologize for the confusion.

I'm not really sure how you see my definition as "ever-broadening" or my reasoning "highly motivated." I frankly don't care what anyone else does. Their life is theirs to lead as they see fit, and what they choose to eat has no bearing on my own dietary choices, nor mine theirs. My only motivation is to address some of the inaccurate things people say about Paleo and point out the body of research that supports the decisions made by the framework and the people that follow it (loosely or strictly).

My definition has never really changed - eat meat (and organs and bones), vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, and (if you can tolerate it) dairy. Prefer whole food and minimally processed (ie - eat an apple instead of just drinking apple juice), prefer meat from animals raised on biologically appropriate diets and environments (ie - pastured cows over feedlot). Avoid grains and legumes. Try to keep your ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3 fats close to 2:1 (or even better, 1:1) as you can. That's the definition and unifying concept. Yes, there can be a lot of variation within those basic guidelines. That's kind of the point. It's not to restrict you to "only eat this, this, and this food."

What's the source of the reasoning for the guidelines? Partially from studying the history of the Homo line, and partially from observing recent scientific findings.

That's not a unifying concept, sorry. It's a list. Just like being kosher means following a list. And the actual theory used to develop that list is so flawed as to be useless. It includes the idea that the human gut stopped evolving a long time ago, and that you can somehow promote health and longevity by eating only foods that were around during the evolution of the gut. I can't even begin to list all the inaccuracies and outright fallacies encompassed by this theory which irk the **** out of actual scientists in this field.

And by highly motivated reasoning, I mean you place great emphasis on any evidence that supports your view, and find excuses for ignoring evidence that doesn't.

The reason I care about this is because there is really no good reason for people to go around avoiding rice and peanuts so they can stick to some made up magic diet based on misguided research and outright falsehood. There is also no good reason to go around trashing modernity as the evil at the root of all unhappiness and ailments. It's just utter BS.

Excluding items from your diet that make you feel bad is not a new thing, and it's not paleo. Its just trial and error self care. And your results aren't going to necessarily apply for the rest of your life either. You could get a tick bite tomorrow that gives you an infection, and suddenly you are unable to process beef or pork.

I'm sorry that I can't explain it in as simple terms as "if it has a face, don't eat it." Though I did mention to someone else before that most of all the variations I've seen can be summed up as "a framework for eating and living that is based partially on what we know about what our pre-neolithic ancestors ate and the types of conditions they lived in and partially on what we've learned harms us or helps us; that goes against a lot of what conventional wisdom says is "healthy" despite a large and growing body of evidence that says otherwise." (And to make sure it's clear, the last part, about the body of evidence is referring to the body of evidence that says that what conventional wisdom says is "healthy" actually isn't.)

I've yet to see any research presented here, nor have I been able to find any criticisms of the framework that have provided evidence against the diet that aren't either "australopithicus didn't eat meat!" which is as invalid as you're saying going by the human diet of 10,000 years ago is, or based on fallacies or even outright lies ("Paleo = Atkins, and you know Atkins died of a heart attack") or studies that have been independently shown to be seriously flawed (The China Study). That's not to say it isn't out there, of course, just that it seems my Google-fu isn't good enough to filter out the crap, so if you have research, I'd be more than happy to see it. Also, if you know of research that proves false any of the research I've presented here, feel free to include it as well. I try to not be dogmatic, and am always open to reading more factual information.

Also, the reason for nixing peanuts and grains in general has to do with the agglutinins in them, which bind to other nutrients, making the body unable to utilize those nutrients. More research has shown that white rice doesn't have the phytic acid or lectins that brown rice has. So, it's considered a "safe" grain, provided it fits within your carbohydrate allotment, though other sources of carbohydrates are generally favored over white rice, since white rice's nutrition (other than carbs) is rather lacking, compared to other sources, especially if you're trying to keep your carbohydrates down.