From: BillK (bill@wkidston.freeserve.co.uk)
Date: Mon May 05 2003 - 18:05:51 MDT
The 'Experiences with Atkins diet' thread seems to have been swamped by
the Paleo diet enthusiasts, who react very strongly to any criticism of
their chosen food groups. I thought it might be useful for an outsider
to layout all the problems I could think of, so they could try to refute
them all at once.
Firstly, I should say that undoubtedly the Paleo diet is far superior to
the standard default western diet that is producing widespread
obesity, heart attacks, cancers, etc. So overall it is a good diet, but
it could be improved (as gts does, in fact, by adding selected modern
items).
The basic paleo diet says that in paleo times humans ate meats, insects,
vegetables, fruits, and nuts, and that is what we should eat nowadays.
Therefore they reject grains, beans, potatoes, dairy products and sugar
(on the assumption that these foods were not available in paleo times)
The basic paleo diet can thus be grouped with the many high-protein,
low-carbohydrate diets that are currently popular, like The Zone.
There are many variants of the paleo diet. For example, the Raw paleo
diet insists on only eating raw meat and uncooked vegetables (based on
the belief that cavemen did not cook their food).
And the Neanderthin diet is rich in fat and protein, recommending fatty
meats, but no grains, potatoes, or milk, - it’s an Atkins-style diet.
Problems:
The first point to make is that there was no single 'Paleolithic Diet'.
Just as desert Aborigines ate different foods to those who lived in
temperate coastal areas or in tropical rain forests, so too Paleolithic
diets varied considerably. The range of available foods varied not only
geographically (ie, from one part of the world to another) but also
seasonally. Unlike today, our early ancestors often had no choice but to
eat the food that was available in season.
If primitives lived near water, they probably ate lots of fish instead
of meat. It is more likely they ate meat only when they were lucky
enough to catch it.
gts likes skinless lean chicken breasts. Nothing wrong with that, except
that a caveman is more likely to have thrown it to the dogs. In hard
times, primitive people would eat the whole animal. In good times they
wanted the fattest animals in the herd.
Hunter-gatherers were certainly very physically active - much more
active than modern man. Getting enough food to live on, by itself, took
plenty of exercise and it was a full-time job. Obesity must have been
very rare. It is bad logic to say that we can have the diet without the
full-time physical exercise. They go together.
Most nutritionists say that avoiding all grains, especially whole
grains, as well as beans, is unwise. You shouldn't overeat refined
grains, but there is no reason to totally avoid all grains and beans.
Similarly, avoiding all milk and dairy products is also unwise. Low-fat
and non-fat dairy products are healthy and nutritious. The paleo diet
claims that you can get all the calcium you need from vegetables, nuts,
and fish (eaten with bones). That is indeed possible, but most modern
Americans simply will not get enough calcium from non-dairy sources
(unless they also take a supplement).
Even paleo enthusiasts recognise that this diet is not well-suited to
the needs of endurance athletes. Athletes need to fuel optimum
performance and recovery, so workouts can be repeated after a relatively
short time. Endurance athletes have a critical need to replenish
glycogen stores immediately after exercise. For this reason, the diet is
modified to permit sugar and starch, but only during and after exercise.
Remember that farmers out-competed hunter-gatherers. Farming could feed
a much larger population and support soldiers to go out and beat up the
hunter-gatherer tribes. Similarly the paleo diet could not feed the
world population today.
Cavemen didn't have coffee, chocolate, alcohol or ice-cream - so you
need a bit of double-think to let yourself indulge occasionally!
Very few hunter-gatherers, whatever they ate, suffered from "diseases of
civilization" such as obesity, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. They
didn’t live long enough to develop them. Their diet never had to evolve
to solve the problems of middle and old age. But almost certainly many
tribes suffered from deficiency diseases and starvation.
And not all Western degenerative diseases come from our diet -- many
relate to lack of exercise, cigarette smoking, exposure to pollutants,
etc. The western sedentary lifestyle is the cause of many problems.
So to sum up, there is not that much wrong with the paleo diet. Just
that it ignores perfectly good food groups and forgets to insist that
regular exercise is also required for good health.
BillK
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