Paleo Diet Is Bunk

carbonman wrote:....

Yes a lot of early writing on the Paloe diet is the fact that before you could eat that meat or that vegetable, you had to hike/jog/run miles to get and and then hump 40 lbs of raw food back to camp those same miles before you could cook it and eat it. And you did it with a group and you shared it with the entire clan, including the people who did the back breaking job of processing the non edible parts into clothing, tools and shelter.

Yeah, I've wondered about that one, too. While "paleolithic" people certainly ate meat when they could, I doubt that they had it all the time, and had to make do without it a lot. On the other hand, mountain lions and such do have much better tools (for stalking and killing), so their diet was limited more by competition and pack behavior than anything else.

Of course, this is pure speculation on my part, I wasn't there...it does appear that the evidence does support that, though.

But, as others have said, that doesn't invalidate whatever positive effects the "Paleo" diet has, just the name.

A meaningless statement:

BlackSpinner wrote:It is about industrial processing

A meaningful statement:

BlackSpinner wrote:What they didn't eat was Twinkies, pies, cakes, chips, Doritos, pop and candy.

RogerSC wrote:While "paleolithic" people certainly ate meat when they could, I doubt that they had it all the time,

If you read that book Paleofantasy, you see that man evolved (and is still evolving) in a lot of different geography with a lot of different foods available. There was no one Paleo diet.

RogerSC wrote:mountain lions and such do have much better tools (for stalking and killing), so their diet was limited more by competition and pack behavior than anything else.

Technical point: Mountain lions were and are solitary hunters.

chunkyfrog wrote:Is "Paleo" something to be avoided by creationists?

Probably. I know a parochial high school that would not let the kids on a field trip go into a dinosaur museum.

Interesting Biblical story regarding diet - https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=MSG

Chevie wrote:A meaningless statement:

BlackSpinner wrote:It is about industrial processing

No it is not. The vast majority of industrial processed food is soaked in added sugar to give it flavour. Commercial potato salad ? first ingredient after potatoes is a form of sugar, pasta sauce, sugar. Read your labels.

RogerSC wrote:Yeah, I've wondered about that one, too. While "paleolithic" people certainly ate meat when they could, I doubt that they had it all the time, and had to make do without it a lot. On the other hand, mountain lions and such do have much better tools (for stalking and killing), so their diet was limited more by competition and pack behavior than anything else.

If you were in an arctic climate your food in the winter was almost exclusively meat and fish based - whale blubber anyone?

Further South is tended to be 75% meat based depending on the season.

Equatorial it was 90% not meat based.

Pick your Paloe diet according to your climate and ancestry.

And pre-humans didn't need claws - they invented tools very early plus they could run long distances for long times in groups. Most animals designed to run do so in spurts, humans jog endless distances in groups - they are capable of wearing out a deer simply by not stopping until the deer is exhausted and then overwhelming it. Studies of the bones of paleolithic and earlier humans show that they ran lots. Marathons were a daily thing.

BlackSpinner wrote:

Chevie wrote:A meaningless statement:

BlackSpinner wrote:It is about industrial processing

No it is not.

It is meaningless in the sense that there is no commonly accepted definition of "industrial processing" of food.

BlackSpinner wrote:first ingredient after potatoes is a form of sugar, pasta sauce, sugar.

This has nothing to do with "processing". It is added ingredients.

You can add tons of sugar (and some people do) in the home kitchen to fresh potatoes or fresh sauces that you "process".

Chevie wrote:
It is meaningless in the sense that there is no commonly accepted definition of "industrial processing" of food.

A pretty commonly accepted definition is "not in some ones home" . Not all of it is questionable. Food frozen immediately as it is harvested is excellent and often healthier then "fresh" if it is many days old.

BlackSpinner wrote:first ingredient after potatoes is a form of sugar, pasta sauce, sugar.

This has nothing to do with "processing". It is added ingredients.

You can add tons of sugar (and some people do) in the home kitchen to fresh potatoes or fresh sauces that you "process".

The difference is that when you add it yourself you know you are turning your food into crap. When you buy food created industrially (as in not a home kitchen) you expect it to have certain standards. It has a lot to do with processing since the sugar is added to hide the lack of real flavour due to over processing. This trains the palate to want sugar in everything. You train your kids to become obese adults.

BlackSpinner wrote:created industrially (as in not a home kitchen)

Ah, I see. You are using the word "industrially" where it should be "commercially". That clears up a lot.

BlackSpinner wrote:Food frozen immediately as it is harvested is excellent and often healthier then "fresh" if it is many days old.

Yes. Freezing allows the producer to harvest at the peak of crop maturity. Otherwise, an early harvest time is needed to cover the time period from field to table.

Julie wrote:Can't remember if it was in the article I read re Paleo, but it was said that cooking food makes it much more accessible nutritionally

it all depends on the food... with some, the heat from cooking destroys nutrients... others, what you said.

chunkyfrog wrote:Is "Paleo" something to be avoided by creationists?

Well I guess the creationist version of "Paleo" would be the whatever food Adam and Eve had to eat in the garden of Eden. (Minus the apples.)

Or maybe you'd want to eat the relatively simple diet that God told Noah and his sons to eat. Basically all the plants and animals. Presumably they didn't do a lot of processing on their food.

Of course, it got complicated later with Kosher requirements.

I think this is one area where we can learn from the "wisdom" of video games.

We tend to think of one food as "good" and one food as "bad." In reality, it's more like degrees of damage. A small cheeseburger does 45 fat damage points, a big one does 65 fat damage points, etc. An organic tofu burger on whole wheat is better, but it still does 30 fat damage points. Your body naturally does 100 fat damage points per day. A one hour walk gives 50 healing points. etc. etc. etc.

Of course, it's more complicated than that. There are several damage and healing types.

Also, we don't know the right relative damage points to assign. Over my life, I've seen various foods go from healthy to unhealthy to healthy again.

I do resent the government actions to, for instance, ban trans fats. It's probably something like 10 grams of trans fat does as much damage as 13 grams of polysaturated fat, 15 grams of polyunsaturated fat, or 18 grams of monosaturated fat.

You could make the same argument and decide to ban bacon because it's less healthy than beef. Or beef vs. chicken, chicken vs. tofu.

They hydrogenate oil, making trans fat for good reasons. It improves the taste and texture for some foods. It also saves money for the consumer as well as the producer. Some of the substitutes for trans fat, like palm oil, are bad for the environment.

Of course, a proper choice on such things requires science and thought, not TV news sound bites.

Julie wrote:http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle ... cs-science

I thought this exert was interesting as no matter how a study leans, there is always more to the story. :

What happens to 19 people on a metabolic ward may not apply to the general population out in the real world who are trying to lose weight,” says Lydia Bazzano, MD, PhD, professor in nutrition research at Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. (Bazzano, who was not involved in this research, co-authored a study last year that followed people for a year and saw that low-carb dieters lost about eight more pounds than low-fat followers.) “It is also difficult to imagine the the physiology of these 19 people represents the diversity found in the U.S. general population,” she says./quote]

This says it all no matter what side of the aisle you fall on:

Hall’s bottom line is one agreed upon by many nutrition scientists on both sides of the diet divide: the best diet, whether low-carb or low-fat, is the one you will stick to./quote]