I find the paleo argument pretty compelling by virtue of the logic of the argument—i.e. homo sapiens evolved in an environment which did not have agriculture and grains. Also there is an M.D. blogger whose name escapes me who strongly advises people to avoid all processed grains because they pulse the glucose-insulin cycle in the blood. In March I overhauled my diet. I was eating a croissant every morning, two slices of bread every noon, and two to four cookies every evening. My grain consumption is now less than three slices of bread every four days. I eat cheese and yogurt. So I am not paleo. I do eat a serving of fruit and a serving of raw nuts at every meal.
I may be the most paleo person I know.
The other overhaul I did to my diet is the largest mass of food I am now taking in daily is a big plate of frozen vegetables at noon. I buy the two pound sacks of: 1) peas; 2) corn; 3) string beans; 4) broccoli and cauliflower mix; 5) peas and corn and carrots and string beans and lima beans mix. Choosing which of the sacks to pour from at noon is one of the high points in my typical day. My weight is down; my body mass index is down; my workouts have more pep. I am going to be hanging with this diet for a while.
I like Pollan’s formula: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. If somebody put that in the rationality quote thread I would upvote it. Beyond his formula, I do not like Pollan at all. He is not a nutritionist; he is a journalist. When I try and read any of his writing at length my eyes roll.
The best partisan of the paleo philosophy in my mind is the anthropologist David Abram who is part of the “re-wilding movement”. I am not anywhere close to a re-wilding movement partisan, but his discussions of forager cultures and what those folks may have to teach us makes Michael Pollan and most of the other more popular figures look like they are serving up extremely thin gruel.
Normal testosterone in males varies by a factor of almost 4:241-827 ng/dL. This sticks in my memory because the last time my doctor did my blood I was at the top of the normal range and I asked him how come I don’t look like a gorilla. (The 241-827 does not stick in my memory—I looked it up.) I think my doctor is awesome but his answer to that question was not.
Your textbook stomach link is truly a picture worth a thousand words.
I find the paleo argument pretty compelling by virtue of the logic of the argument—i.e. homo sapiens evolved in an environment which did not have agriculture and grains.
The thing is, though, we have things like milk and alcohol that are not significantly older than grain consumption but we’ve seen evolutionary effects from them.
It is a point of scholarly contention whether people who retain their lactose tolerance with age were able to displace other people through their superior protein income, or taught milk cultivation to other people, who then had increased prevalence of the lactose toleration gene from that selection pressure. I have no more knowledge than the scholars, but consider the existence of a scholarly controversy evidence for the belief I am disposed against.
There’s also significant selection pressure against alcoholism genes among people that have access to alcohol (or just for ‘alcohol tolerance,’ but the first seems a more robust way to put things) and unsanitary drinking water: the result is that European Americans have dramatically lower rates of alcoholism than Native Americans. (The numbers I’ve seen compare alcoholism rates, not genes linked to alcoholism; so I suspect this is relevant but am not sure.)
So, it seems likely to me that people with European ancestry, at least, are likely to have spent the last hundred generations or so with a high percentage of grain in their diet, and we’ve seen that can make adjustments to patterns adopted for the previous thousand generations.
As for paleo? My friends that have tried it have all reported positive effects. My guess is that the main effects are better food and better food discipline. Whenever you make a serious attempt to plan your diet, some things disappear which you did not consider before- and my guess is that makes a huge difference. Extensive research shows that a lot of staples of industrial food- like sucrose, or massive levels of corn- are pretty bad for you. Simply preparing things yourself over having them prepared commercially has shown to dramatically reduce calorie intake; it’s easy to go to a restaurant and eat the food that tastes great when you didn’t see the two sticks of butter go into the pan. Beyond that, sticking to any sort of plan with food will decrease bad snacking and increase general good habits.
So, my advice is, “don’t pick a clearly deficient diet, and don’t not pick (i.e. default diet)”- beyond that, it doesn’t seem like you can do much besides match to your individual tastes. I think it would take a health benefit of 10 extra years for me to give up bread, since I really like bread. (And I’m expecting to live ~100 more years anyway, and so the duration effect has to be pretty massive to counterbalance the quality of life effect.)
That said, I suspect at some point in the next few years I’ll buy a blood glucose monitor and see what sort of effects my diet is having, and if I need to make any changes to prevent diabetes.
So, my advice is, “don’t pick a clearly deficient diet, and don’t not pick (i.e. default diet)”- beyond that, it doesn’t seem like you can do much besides match to your individual tastes. I think it would take a health benefit of 10 extra years for me to give up bread, since I really like bread.
I hear you. Paleo = NO bread. I am not choosing to go that far. Seven months ago I had grains at the base of the food pyramid at ~ 40% of my daily calorie intake. Now it is less than 5% and the idea of eating a foot long subway is not appetizing to me at all right now. I am genetically European and I eat dairy and I consume alcohol; it is interesting and disturbing to observe at first hand people who dairy and alcohol make physically ill because they have some different G-A-T-C sequences deep in the works of the organism.
It is a mystery at this point. I have the latest American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. They have the food pyramid with grains at the base just like they showed us all in elementary school. My recent experience is that for my bio makeup that pyramid is not the best guide.
Paleo diets generally consider corn a grain so you might want to avoid that. Some paleo variants (like the one I’m currently following) are ok with cheese and yogurt in moderation (and butter).
I find the paleo argument pretty compelling by virtue of the logic of the argument—i.e. homo sapiens evolved in an environment which did not have agriculture and grains. Also there is an M.D. blogger whose name escapes me who strongly advises people to avoid all processed grains because they pulse the glucose-insulin cycle in the blood. In March I overhauled my diet. I was eating a croissant every morning, two slices of bread every noon, and two to four cookies every evening. My grain consumption is now less than three slices of bread every four days. I eat cheese and yogurt. So I am not paleo. I do eat a serving of fruit and a serving of raw nuts at every meal.
I may be the most paleo person I know.
The other overhaul I did to my diet is the largest mass of food I am now taking in daily is a big plate of frozen vegetables at noon. I buy the two pound sacks of: 1) peas; 2) corn; 3) string beans; 4) broccoli and cauliflower mix; 5) peas and corn and carrots and string beans and lima beans mix. Choosing which of the sacks to pour from at noon is one of the high points in my typical day. My weight is down; my body mass index is down; my workouts have more pep. I am going to be hanging with this diet for a while.
I like Pollan’s formula: eat food, not too much, mostly plants. If somebody put that in the rationality quote thread I would upvote it. Beyond his formula, I do not like Pollan at all. He is not a nutritionist; he is a journalist. When I try and read any of his writing at length my eyes roll.
The best partisan of the paleo philosophy in my mind is the anthropologist David Abram who is part of the “re-wilding movement”. I am not anywhere close to a re-wilding movement partisan, but his discussions of forager cultures and what those folks may have to teach us makes Michael Pollan and most of the other more popular figures look like they are serving up extremely thin gruel.
Normal testosterone in males varies by a factor of almost 4:241-827 ng/dL. This sticks in my memory because the last time my doctor did my blood I was at the top of the normal range and I asked him how come I don’t look like a gorilla. (The 241-827 does not stick in my memory—I looked it up.) I think my doctor is awesome but his answer to that question was not.
Your textbook stomach link is truly a picture worth a thousand words.
The thing is, though, we have things like milk and alcohol that are not significantly older than grain consumption but we’ve seen evolutionary effects from them.
It is a point of scholarly contention whether people who retain their lactose tolerance with age were able to displace other people through their superior protein income, or taught milk cultivation to other people, who then had increased prevalence of the lactose toleration gene from that selection pressure. I have no more knowledge than the scholars, but consider the existence of a scholarly controversy evidence for the belief I am disposed against.
There’s also significant selection pressure against alcoholism genes among people that have access to alcohol (or just for ‘alcohol tolerance,’ but the first seems a more robust way to put things) and unsanitary drinking water: the result is that European Americans have dramatically lower rates of alcoholism than Native Americans. (The numbers I’ve seen compare alcoholism rates, not genes linked to alcoholism; so I suspect this is relevant but am not sure.)
So, it seems likely to me that people with European ancestry, at least, are likely to have spent the last hundred generations or so with a high percentage of grain in their diet, and we’ve seen that can make adjustments to patterns adopted for the previous thousand generations.
As for paleo? My friends that have tried it have all reported positive effects. My guess is that the main effects are better food and better food discipline. Whenever you make a serious attempt to plan your diet, some things disappear which you did not consider before- and my guess is that makes a huge difference. Extensive research shows that a lot of staples of industrial food- like sucrose, or massive levels of corn- are pretty bad for you. Simply preparing things yourself over having them prepared commercially has shown to dramatically reduce calorie intake; it’s easy to go to a restaurant and eat the food that tastes great when you didn’t see the two sticks of butter go into the pan. Beyond that, sticking to any sort of plan with food will decrease bad snacking and increase general good habits.
So, my advice is, “don’t pick a clearly deficient diet, and don’t not pick (i.e. default diet)”- beyond that, it doesn’t seem like you can do much besides match to your individual tastes. I think it would take a health benefit of 10 extra years for me to give up bread, since I really like bread. (And I’m expecting to live ~100 more years anyway, and so the duration effect has to be pretty massive to counterbalance the quality of life effect.)
That said, I suspect at some point in the next few years I’ll buy a blood glucose monitor and see what sort of effects my diet is having, and if I need to make any changes to prevent diabetes.
I hear you. Paleo = NO bread. I am not choosing to go that far. Seven months ago I had grains at the base of the food pyramid at ~ 40% of my daily calorie intake. Now it is less than 5% and the idea of eating a foot long subway is not appetizing to me at all right now. I am genetically European and I eat dairy and I consume alcohol; it is interesting and disturbing to observe at first hand people who dairy and alcohol make physically ill because they have some different G-A-T-C sequences deep in the works of the organism.
It is a mystery at this point. I have the latest American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. They have the food pyramid with grains at the base just like they showed us all in elementary school. My recent experience is that for my bio makeup that pyramid is not the best guide.
At least some people who are into paleo think that 80% or 90% will give you almost all the benefits.
Paleo diets generally consider corn a grain so you might want to avoid that. Some paleo variants (like the one I’m currently following) are ok with cheese and yogurt in moderation (and butter).