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> The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of

> The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further While there is indeed a paleo re-enactment fringe that tries to live as they understand our ancient ancestors would, not just nutrition-wise, I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations. > Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements Oh? Wheat requires several months from cultivation to being ready for consumption. Perhaps it was consumed "long before agriculture or town settlements" but then it seems quite implausible that it would amount to anything significant in terms of nutrition, not to mention that it still requires quite a bit of processing before it can be eaten so it isn't exactly readily available nutrients. But lets for a moment assume that yes, there have been many changes and genetic transformations to fruits, nuts, the meats we consume and ourselves. How is it unreasonable, given the catastrophic results of following current nutritional dogma, to look into our over 2 Million- year evolutionary history for clues on what we may be doing wrong, and noting that we've had agriculture for only 0.5% of that time. Even if after agriculture our rate of change multiplied 10-fold, we would still have a nutritional heritage of over 95% of our history where we most likely did not consume, in general, 60-80% of our nutrients from grains and certainly not from sugar, or refined vegetable oils. That sounds like a pretty good clue to me. > is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations And then people all over are giving these ideas a go, and lo! they're feeling better, losing their excess weight, reversing chronic diseases, feeling energetic, not having hunger ups-and-downs, not feeling bloated, etc. (granted, this is all anecdotal evidence) And yet this is one of the dumbest ideas you've encountered in your entire life? You must be pretty lucky having a life of plentiful great ideas. > It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan... There was the shadow of a reasonable argument there. It is entirely possible that given our current population of over 6 billion people, not all of us could follow the exact same diet, then again, there's no reason why anyone would suggest that. A good 1/5th of earth's population does not eat cattle for cultural reasons, cattle is not the only meat, and it can be raised sustainably (while being more nutritious), and there are other good sources of the necessary nutrients from the paleo perpective, and the needs of a male vary from those of a female, from a baby, from a child, from youth to middle age to old age, from summer to winter, from health to injury to fertility vs infertility, from athletes to sages, etc. There's plenty of wiggle room for me to believe that it is indeed sustainable. Sorry for the long post.

xiaoma 16y ago
I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia. Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not. As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US. The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.
- starkfist 16y ago
  I'm no paleo advocate, but your statistics are totally wrong. Denmark is the world leader in per-capita meat consumption, followed by New Zealand and Luxembourg. The USA is number 4. Canada is in the top 10, but the UK and Mexico are not. Mexico isn't even in the top 30. Likewise, consider two of the main diet-influenced lifestyle diseases: heart disease and diabetes. Countries in Eastern Europe are all ahead of the US in heart disease incidence and deaths per capita, as are Germany, Norway, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. There is a higher incidence of diabetes per capita in Germany, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico vs. the US. If you don't adjust per-capita, the countries with the most heart disease and diabetes are China, India and Russia.

xiaoma 16y ago

I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations. I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia. Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not. As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US. The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.

starkfist 16y ago
I'm no paleo advocate, but your statistics are totally wrong. Denmark is the world leader in per-capita meat consumption, followed by New Zealand and Luxembourg. The USA is number 4. Canada is in the top 10, but the UK and Mexico are not. Mexico isn't even in the top 30. Likewise, consider two of the main diet-influenced lifestyle diseases: heart disease and diabetes. Countries in Eastern Europe are all ahead of the US in heart disease incidence and deaths per capita, as are Germany, Norway, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. There is a higher incidence of diabetes per capita in Germany, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico vs. the US. If you don't adjust per-capita, the countries with the most heart disease and diabetes are China, India and Russia.