From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Apr 12 2003 - 18:34:22 MDT
Damien Sullivan wrote:
[gts wrote:]
>> In itself flour is little more than sugar. It is broken down into
>> sugar
>
> Looking at nutritional labels there's a fair bit of protein,
> fiber, and iron there as well, especially for whole wheat
> flour. One test I do is to ask "what would I be getting if I
> got all 2000 of my calories from this food?" and good breads
> and pasta hold up decently.
I don't understand how you can say that breads and pasta hold up decently!
> Some veggies hold up even better, but getting
> all your calories from veggies is definitely a challenge...
Practically any vegetable is more nutrient-dense than any agricultural
product. As for getting all your calories from vegetables, I am not
suggesting a vegetarian diet! On the contrary I consider vegetarian diets to
be unhealthy (though still more healthy than the typical American diet). One
can obtain plenty of additional calories from meat, fish, fowl, eggs, fruits
and nuts.
>> I would say those aborigines are better described as Neolithic rather
>> than Paleolithic.
>
> I would say we can't be that sure of what exactly the
> Paleolithic diet was. I've looked into it before myself, and
> opinions seem to range from "lots of meat" to "lots of
> vegetables nuts and seeds". And the aborigines were still
> pretty healthy. Diverse diet good, yes. I'm much less convinced of
> "grains bad".
The aborigines you mentioned have learned to grind seeds to make flour,
which puts them on the cusp of Neolithic. Before long they will learn to
plant those seeds to provide food for the next season, if they haven't
already learned to do so, and this will put them squarely into the
Neolithic.
I've seen some vegetarian-leaning folks attempt to call their grain-based
diets "Paleolithic," and quite frankly I consider them to be either very
misinformed or dishonest.
I look to Loren Cordain, Ph.D., as the foremost authority on the subject of
paleolithic diets. Dr. Cordain is a professor in the Health and Exercise
Department at Colorado State University. Here for example is an abstract of
one of his recent research articles:
ABSTRACT
Cordain L, Eaton SB, Brand Miller J, Mann N, Hill K.
The paradoxical nature of hunter-gatherer diets: Meat based, yet
non-atherogenic.
Eur J Clin Nutr 2002; 56 (suppl 1):S42-S52.
Field studies of 20th century hunter-gatherers (HG) showed them to be
generally free of the signs and symptoms of cardiovascular disease (CVD).
Consequently, the characterization of HG diets may have important
implications in designing therapeutic diets that reduce the risk for CVD in
westernized societies. Based upon limited ethnographic data (n = 58 HG
societies) and a single quantitative dietary study, it has been commonly
inferred that gathered plant foods provided the dominant energy source in HG
diets.
In this review we have analyzed the 13 known quantitative dietary studies of
HG and demonstrate that animal food actually provided the dominant (65%)
energy source, while gathered plant foods comprised the remainder (35%).
This data is consistent with a more recent, comprehensive review of the
entire ethnographic data (n = 229 HG societies) that showed the mean
subsistence dependence upon gathered plant foods was 32%, whereas it was 68%
for animal foods. Other evidence including: isotopic analyses of Paleolithic
hominid collagen tissue, reductions in hominid gut size, low activity levels
of certain enzymes, and optimal foraging data all point toward a long
history of meat based diets in our species. Because increasing meat
consumption in western diets is frequently associated with increased risk
for CVD mortality, it is seemingly paradoxical that HG societies, who
consume the majority of their energy from animal food, have been shown to be
relatively free of the signs and symptoms of CVD.
The high reliance upon animal based foods would not have necessarily
elicited unfavorable blood lipid profiles because of the hypolipidemic
effects of high dietary protein (19-35% energy) and the relatively low level
of dietary carbohydrate (22-40% energy). Although fat intake (28-58% energy)
would have been similar to or higher than that found in western diets, it is
likely that important qualitative differences in fat intake, including
relatively high levels of MUFA and PUFA and a lower ù-6/ù-3 fatty acid
ratio, would have served to inhibit the development of CVD. Other dietary
characteristics including high intakes of antioxidants, fiber, vitamins and
phytochemicals along with a low salt intake may have operated
synergistically with lifestyle characteristics (more exercise, less stress
and no smoking) to further deter the development of CVD.
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