6 ms·

I'm not going to argue that what you describe isn't good, but 'nature intended us to' isn't a particularly solid argument. You could argue that nature intended

I'm not going to argue that what you describe isn't good, but 'nature intended us to' isn't a particularly solid argument. You could argue that nature intended us to die from Malaria by the age of 30, I'm very glad that for most of the world that's no longer the case.

btam 16y ago
The difference here from malaria would be that our bodies evolved, adapting to the nutrients that we were getting. We're more efficient on them -- more capable of living 'natural' lives. [Of course, whether a 'natural' life is desirable is debatable.] Malaria, however, we attempted to evolve away from(sickle cell anemia).
desigooner 16y ago
That's precisely why the "nature intended us to" argument doesn't really work for me when I hear people trying to convince me to try the Paleo diet. Whatever the benefits might be (besides making the author of those books a good chunk of money), they can be garnered by other means. What I hate even more is when a few devotees of such diets go on a slant about vegetarianism/veganism etc. etc.
- xiaoma 16y ago
  Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.
  - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
    That isn't evolution, it is a diversification of our genetics. There are lots of things that many humans are intolerant to which would have probably been a really big weakness in the past. Humans are no longer subject to natural selection. There needs to be significant culling pressure for real evolution to happen.
    - jshen 16y ago
      "Humans are no longer subject to natural selection." What? Are you sure? Because we most certainly are subject to natural selection.
      - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
        Yes. But not to any significant degree that will cause a change as a species.
        jshen 16y ago
        we most certainly change as a species. Something as simple as choosing who to reproduce with affects the distribution of genes that are passed on to the next generation. A more obvious example of the sorts of changes we can still go through is sickle cell.
        btilly 16y ago
        I'm sorry, but anyone who says this has failed to understand evolution. Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)
        Liron 16y ago
        No, he's right. The most powerful force shaping the future is intelligence. Natural selection on biological genes is orders of magnitude slower.
        btilly 16y ago
        The fact that intelligence is shaping our future faster than evolution does not affect the fact that evolution is still proceeding at the current moment in our species.
        torkins 16y ago
  - nollidge 16y ago
    Actually, everybody was lactose intolerant 15,000 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerant#History_of_genetic_prevalence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerant#History_of_g...
    - AlecSchueler 16y ago
      "15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant"
      - nollidge 16y ago
        Ugh, sorry, yes. Totally misread that.
- JoelMcCracken 16y ago
  I went from being a vegetarian to the paleo diet (or, actually, the "primal" variant). I thought about making this really long, but instead, realize that primal/paleo people use the primitive human as a model, a "common sense" starting base, and then apply liberal amounts of scientific knowledge to get a working solution. It has changed my life. When I follow the diet, it has been pretty impossible not to lose weight. That's with eating as many eggs, as much butter, and as much natural, delicious, other whole foods as I can stuff myself with.
  - Cushman 16y ago
    Second this. I am as critical as anyone of the naturalistic fallacy, and don't generally subscribe to the idea that what worked for cavemen will work for me. However, the metabolic science is there if you read it, and I can't argue with the profound effect switching to a diet based on meat, eggs and other sources of saturated fats has had on my body. I eat as much as I want, whenever I want, I'm never really hungry any more, and I've been losing fat and gaining muscle without thinking about it at all. It's pretty incredible.
  - mortenjorck 16y ago
    A good friend of mine made the same transition (vegetarian to paleo) and says the same: it changed his life.
reason 16y ago
Us not readily acquiring the malaria virus is not due to evolution of our genes; we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives. If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time. Although, there are some in Africa who do have fewer chances of acquiring it due to them being heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia. Anyway, I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I'm just saying that malaria wasn't a particularly apt comparison.
- poppysan 16y ago
  I think the point is that we don't fight it "natually", we fight it with medicine and vaccines. We also have access to clean water which, if we did get malaria, would prevent us from dying from rapid dehydration(which in my understanding is the primary cause of death from malaria.) This is the argument against the caveman diets...
  - patio11 16y ago
    The primary reason we don't die from malaria is none of the above: it is mosquito abatement via intentional habitat destruction and copious use of effective pesticides. Large portions of the US used to be malaria country: not a spe mof it is now, and if there was a malaria outbreak in a US suburb we would wring our hands about the consequences for about five minutes and then dump enough chemicals on that subdivision to save an African country. Ditto Europe, by the way.
    - nerfhammer 16y ago
      I believe the strains of malaria that existed in North American and Europe were far weaker than the African varieties, though
  - rarrrrrr 16y ago
    Medicine is a fine way to treat things like infectious disease, but our western use of it is particularly useless (and often harmful) at treating long term "lifestyle diseases" -- stuff like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Prevention is far more effective, and diets that consist mostly of "food as grown" with minimal processing and alteration are good prevention.
ilovecomputers 16y ago
I'm not arguing what "nature intended us to" do (the human body is more adaptable than what the advocates of the Paleo diet take into consideration). I'm referring more to certain people with health problems who eat mainly fast food or food from the box and barely eat an apple a week. I know a few people who are like this and they end up stressing themselves by sticking to some draconian diet to get healthy. I'm saying there's no need to stick to some strict diet, just eat a wide variety of foods instead of just one subset. The whole "think like a primitive man thing" is just a helpful starting point to point you towards what kinds of food to look for, but I'm not advocating some strict following. I had three In and Out dinners this past week since I'm too short on time to hunt down a pigeon or pluck mysterious fruits from trees all day.
richcollins 16y ago
It's more that we're taking health risks by eating novel foods (things that weren't available as we evolved). There is a lot of evidence that insulin response is responsible for metabolic syndrome. There is also some evidence that the lectins in grains promote malabsorption of dietary nutrients.
sliverstorm 16y ago
Only time I'm satisfied with the 'nature intended us to' argument is some combination of walking/running. The way a good, smooth runner's body flows when they hit a fast jog screams to me "my skeletal and muscular structure was built for this!" Otherwise, yeah, as best I can tell adaptability is our only real designed-in-feature. We're not as fast as most animals out there, but I don't think that means we didn't run a lot in prehistory.

btam 16y ago

The difference here from malaria would be that our bodies evolved, adapting to the nutrients that we were getting. We're more efficient on them -- more capable of living 'natural' lives. [Of course, whether a 'natural' life is desirable is debatable.] Malaria, however, we attempted to evolve away from(sickle cell anemia).

desigooner 16y ago

That's precisely why the "nature intended us to" argument doesn't really work for me when I hear people trying to convince me to try the Paleo diet. Whatever the benefits might be (besides making the author of those books a good chunk of money), they can be garnered by other means. What I hate even more is when a few devotees of such diets go on a slant about vegetarianism/veganism etc. etc.

xiaoma 16y ago
Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.
- JoelMcCracken 16y ago
  That isn't evolution, it is a diversification of our genetics. There are lots of things that many humans are intolerant to which would have probably been a really big weakness in the past. Humans are no longer subject to natural selection. There needs to be significant culling pressure for real evolution to happen.
  - jshen 16y ago
    "Humans are no longer subject to natural selection." What? Are you sure? Because we most certainly are subject to natural selection.
    - JoelMcCracken 16y ago
      Yes. But not to any significant degree that will cause a change as a species.
      - jshen 16y ago
        we most certainly change as a species. Something as simple as choosing who to reproduce with affects the distribution of genes that are passed on to the next generation. A more obvious example of the sorts of changes we can still go through is sickle cell.
      - btilly 16y ago
        I'm sorry, but anyone who says this has failed to understand evolution. Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)
        Liron 16y ago
        No, he's right. The most powerful force shaping the future is intelligence. Natural selection on biological genes is orders of magnitude slower.
        btilly 16y ago
        The fact that intelligence is shaping our future faster than evolution does not affect the fact that evolution is still proceeding at the current moment in our species.
        torkins 16y ago
- nollidge 16y ago
  Actually, everybody was lactose intolerant 15,000 years ago: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerant#History_of_genetic_prevalence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactose_intolerant#History_of_g...
  - AlecSchueler 16y ago
    "15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant"
    - nollidge 16y ago
      Ugh, sorry, yes. Totally misread that.
JoelMcCracken 16y ago
I went from being a vegetarian to the paleo diet (or, actually, the "primal" variant). I thought about making this really long, but instead, realize that primal/paleo people use the primitive human as a model, a "common sense" starting base, and then apply liberal amounts of scientific knowledge to get a working solution. It has changed my life. When I follow the diet, it has been pretty impossible not to lose weight. That's with eating as many eggs, as much butter, and as much natural, delicious, other whole foods as I can stuff myself with.
- Cushman 16y ago
  Second this. I am as critical as anyone of the naturalistic fallacy, and don't generally subscribe to the idea that what worked for cavemen will work for me. However, the metabolic science is there if you read it, and I can't argue with the profound effect switching to a diet based on meat, eggs and other sources of saturated fats has had on my body. I eat as much as I want, whenever I want, I'm never really hungry any more, and I've been losing fat and gaining muscle without thinking about it at all. It's pretty incredible.
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  A good friend of mine made the same transition (vegetarian to paleo) and says the same: it changed his life.

reason 16y ago

Us not readily acquiring the malaria virus is not due to evolution of our genes; we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives. If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time. Although, there are some in Africa who do have fewer chances of acquiring it due to them being heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia. Anyway, I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I'm just saying that malaria wasn't a particularly apt comparison.

poppysan 16y ago
I think the point is that we don't fight it "natually", we fight it with medicine and vaccines. We also have access to clean water which, if we did get malaria, would prevent us from dying from rapid dehydration(which in my understanding is the primary cause of death from malaria.) This is the argument against the caveman diets...
- patio11 16y ago
  The primary reason we don't die from malaria is none of the above: it is mosquito abatement via intentional habitat destruction and copious use of effective pesticides. Large portions of the US used to be malaria country: not a spe mof it is now, and if there was a malaria outbreak in a US suburb we would wring our hands about the consequences for about five minutes and then dump enough chemicals on that subdivision to save an African country. Ditto Europe, by the way.
  - nerfhammer 16y ago
    I believe the strains of malaria that existed in North American and Europe were far weaker than the African varieties, though
- rarrrrrr 16y ago
  Medicine is a fine way to treat things like infectious disease, but our western use of it is particularly useless (and often harmful) at treating long term "lifestyle diseases" -- stuff like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Prevention is far more effective, and diets that consist mostly of "food as grown" with minimal processing and alteration are good prevention.

ilovecomputers 16y ago

I'm not arguing what "nature intended us to" do (the human body is more adaptable than what the advocates of the Paleo diet take into consideration). I'm referring more to certain people with health problems who eat mainly fast food or food from the box and barely eat an apple a week. I know a few people who are like this and they end up stressing themselves by sticking to some draconian diet to get healthy. I'm saying there's no need to stick to some strict diet, just eat a wide variety of foods instead of just one subset. The whole "think like a primitive man thing" is just a helpful starting point to point you towards what kinds of food to look for, but I'm not advocating some strict following. I had three In and Out dinners this past week since I'm too short on time to hunt down a pigeon or pluck mysterious fruits from trees all day.

richcollins 16y ago

It's more that we're taking health risks by eating novel foods (things that weren't available as we evolved). There is a lot of evidence that insulin response is responsible for metabolic syndrome. There is also some evidence that the lectins in grains promote malabsorption of dietary nutrients.

sliverstorm 16y ago

Only time I'm satisfied with the 'nature intended us to' argument is some combination of walking/running. The way a good, smooth runner's body flows when they hit a fast jog screams to me "my skeletal and muscular structure was built for this!" Otherwise, yeah, as best I can tell adaptability is our only real designed-in-feature. We're not as fast as most animals out there, but I don't think that means we didn't run a lot in prehistory.