PALEO: pros, cons and whatever else you may think?

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These are just short-term eliminations to help people determine which foods cause problems for them. The theory is that we've been eating these potentially problematic foods for essentially our whole lives, so we've come to assume the reactions we get from them are just normal (anecdotes vary as to what these symptoms are). The idea is to eliminate them for a short time, long enough to get them out of your system, and then slowly reintroduce them one at a time and see how you react? No problems? Then you know you personally don't react badly to that food. There've been tons of anecdotal evidence showing people's surprise improvement after eliminating foods they never knew they had issues with.

Yeah, this is another thing that always gets thrown out there in Paleo discussions. You have symptoms you don't even know about. You feel wonderful, you have healthy medical tests and exams, but there is some mysterious malady going on inside your body that can't be detected by tests and doesn't make you feel bad. Not really any way to argue one doesn't have the invisible disease, now there is there?

But my question would be, why should I care about some undetectable symptoms if they don't affect my heatlh or make me feel bad?

You're equating you not noticing them to them not affecting your health or making you feel bad. The idea goes something like this - if when you were an infant someone stuck a tack in your foot, and then replaced that tack with a new tack every single day, you would likely grow up thinking that was totally normal, both having the tack and all of the pain etc. that comes with having a tack in your foot. But if you remove the tack and don't replace it, giving your body time to heal, you'll realize just what the tack was doing to you.

That's the idea behind elimination diets like the Whole30. Sometimes these foods cause symptoms we don't realize are symptoms because we've lived with them our whole lives - disturbed sleep, acne, dull hair, bloating, etc. etc. etc. Only when you eliminate whatever's causing these symptoms do you realize that they're not necessarily just part of life, but are in fact caused by a sensitivity/etc. to a certain food. They're not "invisible diseases" - a lot of the time they're things people have just assumed are normal parts of life, or things that normal treatments haven't fixed, etc. Plus, a lot of the time these aren't just minor irritants but actually symptoms of larger issues like inflammation, which will DEFINITELY impact your health, either now or in the future.

There are a lot of diseases that ARE actually invisible or able to go completely unnoticed unless you go looking specifically for them, so there's no need to treat that as some kind of ridiculous notion - not that it's even the notion behind the elimination diet to begin with.

If you feel great and you think that's as good as it gets, then by all means, feel there's no need to give it a try. Heck, if you feel like crap and KNOW this might be the problem, by all means don't give it a try. No one's forcing anyone, or saying you have to; we're just saying that if you're interested in seeing how/if these foods affect you, give it a whirl. Worst comes to worst you miss some foods you enjoy for a month. Best case scenario, you manage to cure a lot of your problems.

I missed round 1

i'm in favour of it. I did it properly for a few months and felt amazing. Dropped weight really easy, full of energy, didn't miss normal foods at all. But I've been off it for a while - moving house meant I just didn't have the kitchen time needed. Still trying to make good choices and I haven't gained any weight back. But I definitely feel better eating paleo. I'm still keeping up some parts that have become a habit, like my morning coffee made on almond milk.

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In for round 2.

Ditto

The sequel is never as good as the original.

Except for Empire Strikes Back... IMO blew away Star Wars

Following.

I wonder if a Slimcado qualifies as "paleo"?

Seems like it defeats the purpose of an avocado... LOL!

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I wonder if a Slimcado qualifies as "paleo"?

I just did a brief search of what a Slimcado is and my initial impression would be yes - BUT I'm really unclear as to how it came into being as compared to say regular avocadoes. The site I was reading said it wasn't genetically modified or developed by man-made intervention, but rather resulted from being grown in a wetter climate and thus getting a more watered down end product. If that is indeed the case I'd personally say it fits within the guidelines of being a Paleo food - it's just another fruit.

It's just that the fat of the avocado is what you eat it for mainly... that and the fiber. Take away some of the prized fat and what's the point?

Terminator 2 > Terminator

Oh yeah... forgot about that one. I need your clothes, your boos and your motorcycle!

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I wonder if a Slimcado qualifies as "paleo"?

I just did a brief search of what a Slimcado is and my initial impression would be yes - BUT I'm really unclear as to how it came into being as compared to say regular avocadoes. The site I was reading said it wasn't genetically modified or developed by man-made intervention, but rather resulted from being grown in a wetter climate and thus getting a more watered down end product. If that is indeed the case I'd personally say it fits within the guidelines of being a Paleo food - it's just another fruit.

It's just that the fat of the avocado is what you eat it for mainly... that and the fiber. Take away some of the prized fat and what's the point?

Well maybe someone likes it, and presumably it's still got other stuff in it that's good. I mean, if you take away the beta-carotene in a carrot it'll still be Paleo and probably still worth eating.

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I wonder if a Slimcado qualifies as "paleo"?

I just did a brief search of what a Slimcado is and my initial impression would be yes - BUT I'm really unclear as to how it came into being as compared to say regular avocadoes. The site I was reading said it wasn't genetically modified or developed by man-made intervention, but rather resulted from being grown in a wetter climate and thus getting a more watered down end product. If that is indeed the case I'd personally say it fits within the guidelines of being a Paleo food - it's just another fruit.

It's just that the fat of the avocado is what you eat it for mainly... that and the fiber. Take away some of the prized fat and what's the point?

Well maybe someone likes it, and presumably it's still got other stuff in it that's good. I mean, if you take away the beta-carotene in a carrot it'll still be Paleo and probably still worth eating.

I guess... I just don't see the point.

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It was trick question - neither avocado nor slimacado are Paleo.

How do you figure when Paleo guidelines include all fruits and vegetables? Unless you're going to argue avocado's not a fruit/veggie?

From what I can tell from the anti-paleo folks, a food can not be paleo unless you are taking bites out of live dinosaurs.

in 4 garbage arguements

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It was trick question - neither avocado nor slimacado are Paleo.

How do you figure when Paleo guidelines include all fruits and vegetables? Unless you're going to argue avocado's not a fruit/veggie?

Avocado's are native to South America - human beings are not.

Therefore, human biology did not evolve eating avocados, as the fruit was not encountered until long, long after the migration out of Africa.

Therefore, by the standard of "we didn't evolve eating that", it is not paleo, by definition.

The only reason the "we didn't evolve eating that" theory exists is for foods that the body hasn't evolved to handle very well.

Ok, let's go with that standard instead, then.

"The vast majority of people handle grain as well as they can handle avocados, therefore both grains and avocados are paleo."

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It was trick question - neither avocado nor slimacado are Paleo.

How do you figure when Paleo guidelines include all fruits and vegetables? Unless you're going to argue avocado's not a fruit/veggie?

Avocado's are native to South America - human beings are not.

Therefore, human biology did not evolve eating avocados, as the fruit was not encountered until long, long after the migration out of Africa.

Therefore, by the standard of "we didn't evolve eating that", it is not paleo, by definition.

...You have ABSOLUTELY no idea how this lifestyle plan works. The only reason the "we didn't evolve eating that" theory exists is for foods that the body hasn't evolved to handle very well. Obviously some foods don't require special evolution to handle properly. Some however do - if you want an example, dairy is a food group that a lot of people have issues digesting because, for the most part, humans didn't have much if any dairy in their diet unless they came from specific cultures that were very dependent on it. People descended from those cultures tend to be much better able to handle dairy than people descended from cultures with minimal or no dairy consumption; that's why there are such varying reactions to dairy throughout human populations as compared to something like, say, carrots. That's because carrots (or similar foods) have essentially always been part of the human diet, so just about every human has evolved to eat them (exceptions obviously exist for individual issues, etc.)

The Paleo guidelines for foods that can be considered 'Paleo' isn't about whether we evolved eating that specific individual food, so your argument about avocadoes is entirely moot.

No, paleo is silly unless you can show why excluding certain things is wrong.