The whole premise behind the Paleo diet is that under today's diet we have increased levels of inflammation in our bodies that is causing a wide range of health problems. Our ancestors who ate a paleo diet didn't have inflammation, so had less health complaints; were stronger, fitter, healthier and lived longer.
I'm not sure I agree with all of this and am interested in investigating the claims and evidence for the Paleo diet. Particularly as many aspects of it are starting to permeate into the more general recommendations for dietary advice. Some of it is in direct contrast to official government dietary guidelines. The most notable one being the advice about saturated fats. The last generation has seen us switch our choice of fat in our diet from what were supposedly bad fats that increased our cholesterol and heart disease as well as a range of cancers, the animal based saturated fats, to good fats that are vegetable based and non saturated. Now it seems we are being led to believe that the reverse is true. Margarine, once seen as a healthy alternative to butter has become likened to poison and one of the worst things that you can possibly put into your body.
Sugar, has never been seen as anything other than unhealthy, but is even further maligned in this diet and strictly eliminated. Grains are demonised as well, even though the advent of farming was probably one of the most significant evolutional leaps we made as a species to sure up availability of a good quality food supply. Other staples from various cultures around the world that have enabled their survival and ability to avoid famine like potatoes, rice, oats and corn are also off the menu. Though interestingly some super foods like quinoa are on the menu, even though their availability was quite restricted.
Fats and oils
I have been reading quite a bit about good and bad oils and watched some youtube offerings on the subject as well. What is a good or a bad fat/oil depends on where you sit in the argument as both sides directly contradict one another. The only point that both sides seem to be able to agree on is Olive oil. If you are sitting on the fence and not sure which way to jump in the good fat versus bad fat debate, perhaps olive oil would be a safe bet.
I have read both of David Gillespie's offerings on the subject: Toxic Oil, and Big Fat Lies. They are follow up books to his sugar free advice books Sweet Poison and the recipe book to go with it. I read the Sweet Poison books a few years ago and have them both on my book shelf. Fast forward a few years and now David Gillespie has twitter and facebook as well so the conversation can be continued long after you've finished reading the book. I think that's pretty cool.
From what I understand, vegetable oils are a super processed food that our body is just not adapted to handle. They primarily are derived from seeds, which we were never able to eat too many of due to their fibre content. Turning them to oil strips them of their fibre and enables us to ingest far more of the oils than we ever could have, or as it turns out should have. Vegetable oils are high in polyunsaturated oil, which is not the best kind of oil for our bodies. Our fat cells are made up of saturated fat, monounsaturated fat and very, very little polyunsaturated fat. If our diet is to emulate this ratio then we need to be have a lot less polyunsaturated fats. Basically all we need consume of them is enough to ensure that we get our essential omega 3 and omega 6 oils. We need very small amounts of these and preferably in the ration of about 2:1 omega 6 to omega 3. Unfortunately the polyunsaturated fats that we consume, through grain fed meat and seed oils are very high in omega 6. This blows our desirable ratio way out of the water, in the order of 10:1 and causes inflammation in our bodies. This inflammation had been linked to our chronic lifestyle diseases of arthritis, heart disease, diabetes, etc.
Sugar
Like the oils argument, sugar is also a highly refined product that having been stripped of its fibre and is too concentrated for our bodies. The main problem with sugar is the fructose part, according to David Gillespie and others. I'm not convinced that this issue is a problem so much with the paleo people as they seem pretty fond of raw honey, which would have to be very high in fructose. It seems that the paleo diet is deliberately high in fats and so in order to not get fat, something has gotta give in the diet. So removing an entire food group like carbohydrates would definitely help. I'm guessing the thinking here is that apart from raw honey and some berries, very little other sweet stuff was available in our paleolithic diet 10000 plus years ago. Given that consuming coconut oil is high on the list of desirable behaviours, I'm guessing because of the pacific islanders use of that oil for most of their history, It follows that they also would have had access to a lot of very sweet fruits. Mmmmm mangoes, anyone?
Grains
Grains are out too. They have phytates which block absorption of essential minerals. There are plenty of other sources of these minerals (for a non vegetarian) that eating grains is rendered unnecessary. I'm pretty sure that some grains and seeds were consumed in our caveman existence and made up an important part of the diet in between big animal kills. Examination of native bush tucker for Australian Aboriginals showed consumption of starchy roots, nuts and seeds in addition to their meat. It didn't take the Aboriginals long to prefer the easy meat and grains offered by the Europeans in the form of mutton and flour, over the arduous process of the hunter gatherer lifestyle. Granted, we stole a lot of their hunting grounds and they still enjoyed supplementing with traditional tucker. But there is no way this country could have supported a population the size that it has now with a hunter gatherer approach. The country could barely feed it's native inhabitants with some tribes being pushed right to the edge of subsistence living. Agriculture definitely ensured the proliferation of the human race.
Potatoes, corn and oats have been the staple diet of different groups of people throughout history. But each of these, and soy are much maligned in the paleo diet. Again the same argument is used as for grains, that these vitamins and minerals can be gained from elsewhere in the diet, so consumption of them is not necessary. Sweet potatoes are on the list as desirable food, which is great for me as I grow sweet potato in abundance in my garden. Based on my garden, at the rate sweet potato grows I am sure we could solve world hunger just by simply planting sweet potato right across the world.
Super foods such as quinoa and chai seem to be popular additions to the paleo diet as they are considered to be ancient grains They have amazing properties such as omega 3 oils and many nutrients. I often wonder, though, that if wheat (or oats or potatoes, insert your chosen starch) was discovered today wouldn't it be seen as a wonder food? I know that it has been genetically altered over the ages to produce greater yields but it has the sort of nutrient profile that would herald as something pretty amazing if we discovered it today. Because it's been around for so long we are quite ho hum about it.
Meat and dairy
Meat is a big part of the paleo diet, and raw dairy. I'm not sure that we particularly had access to dairy foods in the stoneage. Dairy strikes me a very domesticated, farming activity. I do grant that meat would have been a large part of the diet when they could get it. But all parts of the animal would have been eaten. I know that I am no big fan of organ meats, or eating the skin and other yucky bits. ( I think this maybe where bone broths and gelatine come into the diet).
Supplements
Any newest, and most wonderful diet that is the answer to all our ills and that also requires us to supplement sounds somehow flawed to me. If the diet is so great then supplementation should not be needed. In my view supplementation is about as highly processed as you can get. To take the individual nutrients instead of the whole foods, that contain them and other properties besides, sounds very unnatural. Surely a wider diet encompassing a greater variety of foods would be preferable to supplementation. Supplements, like diets too, I guess, are faddish. Every year there is the lastest greatest supplement that you just have to have or you will die early and in great pain, whilst having lived a demented life where you are chronically tired, fat and have a crap sex life. Have I covered all the things that each new supplement claims to improve?
Modern diet and weight gain consists of junk food, high access to a lot of very high calorie foods with low nutrient value. We are eating more and getting fatter. anytime you remove a major group of foods from your diet you are likely to lose weight. It restricts your choice of food and immediately prevents you from snacking as effectively and reduces your unhealthy choices when dining out or socialising. Don't under estimate the calorific punch of a regular handful of bikkies or a slice of cake with your cuppa.
There's so many things that we are not evolved for if you take the premise that anything that our ancestors from the paleolithic period didn't do, we shouldn't do. Surely if diet has such a big effect, so would shelter, population density, artificial light, pollution, and many other modern parts of life that would have been totally alien to a stone age man. I quite frankly don't buy that they lived longer healthier lives. They died younger and never had the opportunity to develop life long chronic medical conditions. And if they did suffer from chronic conditions, how would we know? How could we know if they were generally happy with their day to day life and health? We can't.
Every diet I have ever seen involves the same basic principles packaged differently so that they look like the newest latest thing. If you pick up the junk food, excess fat, sugar and oil and toss them out of your diet, whilst incorporating more salads, fruit and whole (real) food in your diet you are automatically healthier and going to lose weight. And yes, paleolithic people probably ate more like this, they certainly didn't have bags of chips, lollies, cakes and biscuits.
Add to this the removal of a major food grouping and you also automatically drastically reduce your food choices, again removing the opportunity to as easily overeat. This would have had parallels to paleolithic people too, they had drastically less food choice and food availability compared to what we have today. This would mean they would tend to be leaner, and also more prone to be at risk of starvation or malnutrition during extreme times.
And finally, just to complete this ramble, what is it with coconut oil? How many of us have the genetic lineage to claim that we are evolved for eating coconut oil? Surely you would have to claim some more recent northern African or South East Asian descent to be able to say we are used to that food. Most of us spent an awful lot of years in cold old Europe with no sign what so ever of coconuts.
I know I still have a bunch more to read on this topic, so my views may change over time. But at first investigation this is where I sit. Maybe I will find some answers to my questions and I will discuss them in a future blog, or perhaps not, we'll just have to wait and see....
