I’m a pseudo-paleo dieter since 2009. Outlining my diet considerations in a nutshell:
There is a tangled hierarchy of data when it comes to nutrition. On the top there are the large-scale longitudinal epidemological studies, which tell us about health effects directly; however, they are by far most prone to bias. Then come smaller clinic trials and placebo controlled studies, and after that are “dietary arguments”, like paleo. Higher tier data can disprove lower tier data, but because analysis of higher tier data is often very biased (see e.g. Campbell’s take on the China study), we have to reach back to more trustworthy lower tier data to filter out absurd results (e.g. if a small clinic study finds that substance X is toxic in specific ways in dose Y, then we’re compelled to question a longitudinal study’s result that prolonged consumption of X in dose ~Y correlates with longer lifespan.).
As to the paleo argument, a stronger version of it posits that a diet is optimal if it closely resembles the diet that was consumed for the longest evolutionary time.
I mostly reject this argument.
First, there are “new” foods that happen to be okay because their specific composition and nutritional profile contains nothing obviously harmful. Take butter: it is just a mixture of fatty acids which mixture doesn’t fundamentally differ from actual animal fat. Take oat: it is grain that happens to be okay because its proteins are positively harmless compared to wheat’s gluten and lectin, the former inducing inflammation and possibly leaky gut and the latter messing up one’s fat metabolism (plus there are phytates that demineralize teeth and make minerals from food biologically unavailable). Arguments for irreducibility of diet (for example: “whole pieces of food and whole diets have effects irreducible to the effects of constituents”) sometimes apply but more often does not; a specific fatty acid in butter or tallow is just the same thing, for instance. If a food has benign constituents that are known to interact in non-harmful ways, it really is a strong indicator that that food is benign.
Second, evolutionary pressure is not constant, and it was most likely much greater in the 10k years since agriculture than in the 10k years before it. This is of course in the same class of arguments as paleo itself; you cannot just consider yourself fully evolved to deal with whatever food; you have to also discount this argument with the prior information you have.
I accept though a Weak Paleo Heuristic: “closely scrutinize foods that are literally evolutionarily unprecedented in terms of types of constituent macronutrients or the ratios and amounts of those nutritients”. This heuristic aims a lot more specifically at industrial, 20th century foods than the standard paleo argument. It picks out trans fat, vegetable oil and refined sugar, which are indeed rather bad. It ignores wheat though, and wheat’s significant disadvantages are as of now quite clearly and forcefully established (see e.g. this).
I singled out the types of foods to my diet that are least likely to be harmful or lifespan-reducing. I kept eggs, high-fat dairy, most meats and fish, coconut oil, cocoa, oat, vegetables, most fruits except for the very very sugary ones, and kept some benign starchy food in moderated amounts, like lentils, peas and potatoes, and I occasionally eat rice. I minimized (eliminated when possible) wheat, simple sugar and n-6 fatty acids.. I’m also on a carefully constructed regimen of supplements, of which the most important are probably Vitamin D3 and fish oil, the others being only of interest to life extension aficionados.
My interpretation of this data is that my current diet works well for me
Do you have a comprehensive blood test? If you only have a subjective account of your well-being, that is extremely limited data. A lot of humans get by subjectively well on bad food until their late 40s, when they rapidly start deteriorating. A lot of sneaky deficiencies and disorders can be discovered with a simple blood test, and it also allows you to make a reasonably good estimate of your cardiovascular risks, although the interpretation of blood lipids is also prone to great amount of bullcrap as of now (e.g. last time I got a warning on my total cholesterol because my HDL was too high).
My personal subjective well-being did not radically change when I switched to my pseudo-paleo. My blood profile is hard data however: I have gone to a risk level lower than the 5th percentile. If you want to optimize well-being, you should still at least try some diet modifications. Wheat elimination and Vitamin D supplementation (2000-5000 IU per day on average, optimal amount is calibrated with blood testing) are the two single modifications that are most often reported having dramatic effects.
Yes, hunter-gatherers are adapted to a different diet, but fire was first used to cook food 2 million years ago, and appears widespread by 100 kiloyears (ky) ago, with noticeable adaptations in humans (from smaller teeth to resistance to air pollution). Lactose tolerance demonstrates the ability of human biology to adapt to new diets. (...) Am I really supposed to believe that there aren’t genes floating around that wheat (domesticated 10ky ago) is good for?
To reiterate my point about dietary arguments, this is the sort of thing you usually cannot do with evolutionary arguments. The most what you said here should do is to slightly reduce the amount of plausible harm done by agricultural (not industrial!) foods.
It ignores wheat though, and wheat’s significant disadvantages are as of now quite clearly and forcefully established (see e.g. this).
Wheat was introduced to China 3.5 kya, and it’s not clear to me that it ever became a staple. I’m sure that’s not the only arrow in the quiver against wheat, but whether or not it’s good for the Chinese is not data I find compelling. This suggests to me that I should stick to my traditional diet as well as that wheat might be bad, rather than exclusively the second.
It’s also mentioned in a comment there that fermentation might reduce the detrimental effects of wheat, so I should point out that my bread is all sourdough thanks to the dough preparation method I use.
Do you have a comprehensive blood test?
No. Where do I get one, and what am I looking for? My primary care physician?
Wheat was introduced to China 3.5 kya, and it’s not clear to me that it ever became a staple.
Eh? I was taught in my classes that wheat was the staple crop of northern China in the same way that rice was the staple crop of southern China, and this was one of the distinguishing traits of the two general regions. And googling “China wheat” I find links like https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/asia/14china.html where there is serious international and Chinese concern over problems with the large Chinese wheat crop.
I was linking northern China with sorghum and millet, as I recalled those as original crops domesticated there. I shouldn’t have been surprised that wheat eventually dominated there, though, so thanks for pointing that out.
I’m a pseudo-paleo dieter since 2009. Outlining my diet considerations in a nutshell:
There is a tangled hierarchy of data when it comes to nutrition. On the top there are the large-scale longitudinal epidemological studies, which tell us about health effects directly; however, they are by far most prone to bias. Then come smaller clinic trials and placebo controlled studies, and after that are “dietary arguments”, like paleo. Higher tier data can disprove lower tier data, but because analysis of higher tier data is often very biased (see e.g. Campbell’s take on the China study), we have to reach back to more trustworthy lower tier data to filter out absurd results (e.g. if a small clinic study finds that substance X is toxic in specific ways in dose Y, then we’re compelled to question a longitudinal study’s result that prolonged consumption of X in dose ~Y correlates with longer lifespan.).
As to the paleo argument, a stronger version of it posits that a diet is optimal if it closely resembles the diet that was consumed for the longest evolutionary time.
I mostly reject this argument.
First, there are “new” foods that happen to be okay because their specific composition and nutritional profile contains nothing obviously harmful. Take butter: it is just a mixture of fatty acids which mixture doesn’t fundamentally differ from actual animal fat. Take oat: it is grain that happens to be okay because its proteins are positively harmless compared to wheat’s gluten and lectin, the former inducing inflammation and possibly leaky gut and the latter messing up one’s fat metabolism (plus there are phytates that demineralize teeth and make minerals from food biologically unavailable). Arguments for irreducibility of diet (for example: “whole pieces of food and whole diets have effects irreducible to the effects of constituents”) sometimes apply but more often does not; a specific fatty acid in butter or tallow is just the same thing, for instance. If a food has benign constituents that are known to interact in non-harmful ways, it really is a strong indicator that that food is benign.
Second, evolutionary pressure is not constant, and it was most likely much greater in the 10k years since agriculture than in the 10k years before it. This is of course in the same class of arguments as paleo itself; you cannot just consider yourself fully evolved to deal with whatever food; you have to also discount this argument with the prior information you have.
I accept though a Weak Paleo Heuristic: “closely scrutinize foods that are literally evolutionarily unprecedented in terms of types of constituent macronutrients or the ratios and amounts of those nutritients”. This heuristic aims a lot more specifically at industrial, 20th century foods than the standard paleo argument. It picks out trans fat, vegetable oil and refined sugar, which are indeed rather bad. It ignores wheat though, and wheat’s significant disadvantages are as of now quite clearly and forcefully established (see e.g. this).
I singled out the types of foods to my diet that are least likely to be harmful or lifespan-reducing. I kept eggs, high-fat dairy, most meats and fish, coconut oil, cocoa, oat, vegetables, most fruits except for the very very sugary ones, and kept some benign starchy food in moderated amounts, like lentils, peas and potatoes, and I occasionally eat rice. I minimized (eliminated when possible) wheat, simple sugar and n-6 fatty acids.. I’m also on a carefully constructed regimen of supplements, of which the most important are probably Vitamin D3 and fish oil, the others being only of interest to life extension aficionados.
Do you have a comprehensive blood test? If you only have a subjective account of your well-being, that is extremely limited data. A lot of humans get by subjectively well on bad food until their late 40s, when they rapidly start deteriorating. A lot of sneaky deficiencies and disorders can be discovered with a simple blood test, and it also allows you to make a reasonably good estimate of your cardiovascular risks, although the interpretation of blood lipids is also prone to great amount of bullcrap as of now (e.g. last time I got a warning on my total cholesterol because my HDL was too high).
My personal subjective well-being did not radically change when I switched to my pseudo-paleo. My blood profile is hard data however: I have gone to a risk level lower than the 5th percentile. If you want to optimize well-being, you should still at least try some diet modifications. Wheat elimination and Vitamin D supplementation (2000-5000 IU per day on average, optimal amount is calibrated with blood testing) are the two single modifications that are most often reported having dramatic effects.
To reiterate my point about dietary arguments, this is the sort of thing you usually cannot do with evolutionary arguments. The most what you said here should do is to slightly reduce the amount of plausible harm done by agricultural (not industrial!) foods.
Wheat was introduced to China 3.5 kya, and it’s not clear to me that it ever became a staple. I’m sure that’s not the only arrow in the quiver against wheat, but whether or not it’s good for the Chinese is not data I find compelling. This suggests to me that I should stick to my traditional diet as well as that wheat might be bad, rather than exclusively the second.
It’s also mentioned in a comment there that fermentation might reduce the detrimental effects of wheat, so I should point out that my bread is all sourdough thanks to the dough preparation method I use.
No. Where do I get one, and what am I looking for? My primary care physician?
Eh? I was taught in my classes that wheat was the staple crop of northern China in the same way that rice was the staple crop of southern China, and this was one of the distinguishing traits of the two general regions. And googling “China wheat” I find links like https://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/14/world/asia/14china.html where there is serious international and Chinese concern over problems with the large Chinese wheat crop.
I was linking northern China with sorghum and millet, as I recalled those as original crops domesticated there. I shouldn’t have been surprised that wheat eventually dominated there, though, so thanks for pointing that out.