From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 09:05:00 MDT
>> Who thinks that we should "choose something nutritionally sound, like
>> a cheeseburger with a slice of tomato and lettuce leaf"? Vegetarians
>> and health faddists would avoid the meat. Atkins dieters would avoid
>> the bread. Paleo dieters would avoid the cheese. I am really
>> curious. Which diet actually promotes cheeseburgers as
>> "nutritionally sound"? -- Harvey Newstrom, CISSP, IAM, GSEC, IBMCP
Of course paleodieters like me avoid both the high-carb bread and the
high-saturated-fat cheese. We also avoid the fatty kinds of meat often used
for making hamburger.
An ideal meal for me is a lean cut of meat or fish or fowl, trimmed of any
fat, with a salad, perhaps some cooked veggies, and perhaps a piece of
fruit. I make my salads with fresh nutrient-dense raw spinach leaves (not
lettuce, which is little more than fiber and water) and I always top them
with chopped fresh raw broccoli crowns (broccoli contains substances known
to help prevent cancer). I sometimes add onions and other vegetables, and/or
chopped nuts, depending on what I have on hand. I sometimes cook some
vegetables as another side dish but most vegetables taste better to me raw
and go fine with my salad. I use olive oil as the base of my salad
dressings. I sprinkle my foods, especially salads, with pepper and other
spices, but never with salt. Pepper contains a substance shown to increase
absorption of nutrients in the gut.
I do not count calories, nor do I count carbs. There are no reasons to count
anything on a paleodiet. I eat until I'm full and the carbs and calories
take care of themselves. No hassles, no worries.
A big piece of lean steak or fish or poultry with a big healthy salad as
described above is a filling, tasty and healthy meal that no modern diet
guru can refute! Dr. Atkins would not object, nor would his ideological
adversaries, Drs. Pritiken and Ornish.
As for vegetarians who might object, well, I don't consider vegetarians to
rate as diet experts in the first place. Most modern vegetarians object to
the consumption of animal foods on the philosophical grounds that the
killing of animals adds unneeded suffering to the world, which in my mind
puts them in the same category with PETA. Vegetarians can no longer call on
evolutionary evidence to support their claims, thanks to recent discoveries
of meat-eating hominids dating back millions of years. Some vegetarians can
object based to the fattiness and unnatural balances of nutrients of the
meat consumed in the typical American diet, but one is not limited to eating
only to fatty corn-fed beef.
The only popular "diet guru" I know of who might allow cheeseburgers w/bun
is Barry Sears Ph.D., and then only in modest quantities. Sears allows
almost anything in his diet, provided that one eats with the ratio of
carbs/fat/protein and other ratios that he recommends. I have mixed feelings
about Dr. Sears. On the one hand I believe his diet is an improvement over
the typical American diet but on the other I don't buy most his theories
about the way in which foods affect certain hormones, particularly
eicosanoid hormones. His theory about foods as they pertain to eicosanoids
looks to me like a contrived snow-job designed to help differentiate himself
from other diet doctors and sell more books. I've found numerous examples of
sentences in his books stated as "truth" but which appear to be totally
unsupported by anything other than his own wild-ass conjectures. Still,
despite these objections, I'd rather see someone on a Sears diet than on
none at all.
-gts
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