22 ms·

It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream

72 points by tokenadult 14y ago

knowtheory 14y ago
Thanks for finding this tokenadult. I've been trying to convince my wife (who has a degree in dietetics and a minor in anthropology/archeology) to write about this subject for a while, but food and diet are such visceral topics for people that she finds discussions of the topics incredibly frustrating. Food, language, gender norms, these are all fields of study where there is substantial research and a lot of resolute but unfounded claims by people with axes to grind, or products to sell. All of which is to say, there's not a lot of skepticism, even amongst populations who claim to be generally analytical and skeptical.
- arethuza 14y ago
  For anyone who needs a top-up on their scepticism in this area I can strongly recommend Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science": http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-science/ http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-science/
- teach 14y ago
  My wife is the same way. She has a PhD in nutrition and is also a registered dietitian, but she just can't muster the energy to argue online with people that have read two articles on Pub Med.
vitno 14y ago
and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part. I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet. Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoid high amounts of carbs & sugar now. How could I not feel better? It doesn't have anything to do with evolutionary adaptability. edit: knowtheory below is referring to something I edited out regarding an attempt to double blind myself to ensure this wasn't all in my head.
- knowtheory 14y ago
  See, that's just fine! It's awesome that you've found a diet that makes you feel better. But here's the thing. You can't double blind yourself. That's the whole issue with blind trials. Double blind trials require that you do not and can not determine whether you are in the treatment group or not. Additionally, unless you're having an unrelated person prepare the food, w/o any knowledge of which foods are in the "paleo" group vs the control group, you're not operating double blind. If it's just you and another person, it would be challenging to set up a double blind experiment (although i'd be interested to hear what you tried).
  - vitno 14y ago
    I removed that. I figured that I would get some flak. :P I did have my roommate prepare the food. Another one of my roommates swapped/labeled the food and then went to class, no interaction. It was mostly because he didn't believe that I could feel it and that it was mostly in my head. (which I totally understand, I was pretty worried about that as well) We switched out white flour for some almond flour. We also did another one where he sweetened something using honey and another using corn syrup. (I could totally taste the difference there though) Certainly not rigorous, but enough to make me pretty sure it isn't entirely a placebo effect. I'm planning on getting a Celiac Sprue test at some point.
    - LaGrange 14y ago
      If you have adverse reactions to wheat products after provocation (even tiny amounts should trigger the effects), then it's indeed likely that you do have coeliac disease. About 1% of population have it, so it's not that surprising. Just remember that a test would require a proper, long provocation, otherwise you'll just get a negative from the biopsy because there's no intestinal damage anymore. On the other hand, if a diet helps, and provocations after, say, a month (but without your knowledge) make things go downhill fast, you can be sure enough. Welcome to the wonderful life where you get to check yoghurt for trace amounts of wheat products, and pizza is a holy grail (one of my closest friends is coeliac, for people in Amsterdam area, Woodstone in Haarlem makes good gluten-free pizza).
tcskeptic 14y ago
I'm not a Paleo dieter, but I am familiar with the gist of their claims. I do not understand how this study is a response to those claims. The 137 mummies studied are from "Individuals from ancient Egypt, ancient Peru, the Ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands were imaged." Of those we have 3 agricultural civilizations (Egytp, Peru, Pueblo) and one hunter gatherer (Aleutian). So 3/4 of the studied civilizations don't argue agains the basic Paleo claim at all. I can't see from looking the the links what the results from the Aleutian cohort were.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  No-true-paleo fallacy.
  - bullsbarry 14y ago
    Not at all. The point OP was making is that these 3 cultures are decidedly NOT paleolithic, and it's disingenuous to use them as examples of the effects of the paleolithic diet on cardiovascular health.
  - ef4 14y ago
    The no-true-scotsman fallacy implies a shifting or pedantically narrow definition. That's not applicable here. Paleo fans are very clear that they're trying to emulate pre-agricultural diets. That's the sine qua non of the Paleo fad. So it's totally legitimate that they would object to evidence about agricultural societies.
- thomaspaine 14y ago
  >Probable or definite atherosclerosis was noted in 47 (34%) of 137 mummies and in all four geographical populations: 29 (38%) of 76 ancient Egyptians, 13 (25%) of 51 ancient Peruvians, two (40%) of five Ancestral Puebloans, and three (60%) of five Unangan hunter gatherers (p=NS). I think the point is that atherosclerosis was just as prevalent in the hunter gatherer society as it was in the agricultural ones. Sample size is admittedly small though.
rohern 14y ago
>But how does one determine what the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was in the ancient past? Time and the decomposition it brings are brutal on the flimsy meat of which we are made, and it is uncommon to have access to anything other than bones, much less bodies intact enough to be examined for signs of atherosclerotic disease. Even so, however, there have been indications that the idea that ancient humans didn’t suffer from atherosclerosis is a comforting myth, the most recent of which is a study published a week ago online in The Lancet by Prof. Randall C. Thompson of Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and an international team of investigators entitled Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations. Basically, it was a study of 137 different mummies from four different geographic locations spanning 4,000 years. The whole time I was reading this I could only think, "science is great!" Thanks for posting this.
mkr-hn 14y ago
Paleo falls into the same trap as most ideologies. Some percent of True Believers become jerks about it ("but it's so obvious! Just look at [weakly correlated thing]!"), and end up making the whole group look bad. It's unfortunate, because most ideologies don't seem to be made to alienate. We get along fine as long as we don't bring up our pet beliefs.
tcskeptic 14y ago
I'm not a Paleo dieter, but I am familiar with the gist of their claims. I do not understand how this study is a response to those claims. The 137 mummies studied are from "Individuals from ancient Egypt, ancient Peru, the Ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands were imaged." Of those we have 3 agricultural civilizations (Egytp, Peru, Pueblo) and one hunter gatherer (Aleutian). So 3/4 of the studied civilizations don't argue agains the basic Paleo claim at all. I can't see from looking the the links what the results from the Aleutian cohort were.
seivan 14y ago
Dietdoctor.com <= Great source (and the guy is actually a real doctor).
- teach 14y ago
  Doctor as in MD? They don't necessarily know much about nutrition, either...
stiff 14y ago
Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional science that in general the more processed the food is the more harmful it is for us. There is also the reverse problem, illustrated by the condescending attitude toward herbalism in this article, of people who idealize modernity, and for example believe only medicine in the form of pills can be effective, even though plants may contain exactly the same chemical compounds. I am not saying there is no fraud in herbalism, sure there is plenty of it, but herbs in general clearly can have strong both positive and negative effect on physiology, which is really quite obvious if you consider the variety of herbs existing and that they all contain lots of different chemical compounds. In general I think it is ridiculous to ignore the thousands of years of experimentation and exploration of our ancestors just because it wasn't "science-based".
- OmIsMyShield 14y ago
  I think part of what the author sees as problematic is the loose definition of what "natural" means - to use your herbalism example, some people consider herbs to be automatically better than {mainstream_treatment_x} just because it is "natural", for a random value of "natural". So you are probably saying the same / a similar thing as the author with slightly different emphasis. edit: grammar, spelling mistakes, mainstream_treatment_x instead of "better tested"
- klodolph 14y ago
  I recently went to the doctor and got a recommendation to try one of three different medicines. Two were "supplements" and the third one was an off-label psychiatric medication. Each drug had its own set of side effects, and I chose one of the supplements because the off-label psychiatric drug required a prescription. I just didn't think "natural" versus "artificial" was relevant. The things that concern me about herbalism are simple: 1. The compounds in herbs are not tested as rigorously as "modern" drugs, at least by the FDA in the US. Knowledge of side effects and safe dosage is more limited. 2. Herbs are often subject to variation in dosages from pill to pill, because the source plant matter is variable and the actual yields are difficult to determine. It's not about ignoring thousands of years of experimentation, it's just that our standards are higher, and the old experiments were poorly conducted. We want to know the side effects and the interactions. We want to know the drug's mechanism. We want to know about the possible complications. We want to know the effective dose and the unsafe dose. And we want to be able to isolate things: herbs contain many chemicals: you might want one of the chemicals, but not want the side effects from one of the other chemicals. It reminds me of the almond extract you can buy at the store. The natural almond extract tastes the same as artificial almond extract, but the natural almond extract contains more cyanide. People pay a premium for things labeled "natural". The heuristic to use natural things works well for foods, but it's a harmful heuristic when considering drugs. It's also a bad heuristic for heating your home (wood fires), immunizing your children (let them die from whooping cough), family planning (pull out), et cetera.
api 14y ago
I have a friend who's into homeopathy and such, and I normally keep my mouth shut. But I have done some thinking about why. This friend is very smart, very intellectual, very curious, and not overly credulous. She's really a bit of a nerd. From my few conversations on the matter, the thing that's jumped out at me is this: She's drawn to alternative medicine because it's open source. Like many nerds, she hates closed proprietary systems and loathes bureaucracy. If alt-med worked, it would be vastly superior to conventional "industrial" medicine. The latter is bureaucratic, run by closed guilds, closed source, and radiates this standoffish "you are an idiot, do not ask questions" mentality. By contrast alt-med is open. Anyone can learn about it. Anyone can become a practitioner. Anyone can experiment. It's tolerant of differences of opinion to a much greater extent than conventional medicine. It comes off as welcoming, inviting, and engaging. Of course, I understand some of the reasons medicine is the way it is. Unlike hacking code on a computer, screwing up medicine can really hurt people. (Code on a computer generally can't, unless you're talking about certain kinds of specialized areas.) But it does seem to me that this is part of the appeal of alt-med. The other appeal, I think, is escape from the bureaucratic hell that is conventional medicine. Alt-med is actually more free-enterprise. There is more patient choice. It's less expensive. My wife and I just had a baby, and dealing with the insurance company has been a living hell. Edit: one more observation. We've tried a little bit of alt-med type stuff to varying degrees of success. I think I can also say this, and I think it goes a long way to explaining alt-med's popularity. The bedside manner you get with "alternative" practitioners is vastly better. I mean huge orders of magnitude better. We have a pretty good doctor and a pretty good hospital, and even then we occasionally feel like meat. And ours is really above average in terms of doctor-patient relations and comfort. I've heard some real slaughterhouse horror stories, particularly around women giving birth in ordinary hospitals. I have a relative who has such a story. She really felt like a piece of beef, and the doctor was a real jerk. The physical design of the spaces is better too. Go into an alt-med clinic and it feels warm, welcoming, calming. Go into a hospital or a conventional doctors' office and it looks like a car repair shop. Again -- to draw an analogy to the computer industry -- Apple has proven just how much aesthetics matter. Apple's products are generally not technically superior, but they are often vastly superior aesthetically and in terms of usability.
- nathan_long 14y ago
stuaxo 14y ago
"undergird" .. !?
- smackay 14y ago
  yup, it's good. From Merriam-Webster: "to form the basis or foundation of : strengthen, support <facts and statistics subtly undergird his commentary"
JPKab 14y ago
I agree with a lot of what this article says regarding the "naturalistic fallacy",etc. However, this quote is an example of shallow thinking that drives me nuts: "Of course, it’s hard not to note that cancer and heart disease are primarily diseases of aging, and life expectancy was so much lower back in the day that a much smaller percentage of the population lived to advanced ages" Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today.
- kyllo 14y ago
  I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy. It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause--the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age." This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. But then they found out that the estrogen pills were causing breast cancer, so that put a stop to that.
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    > This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.
    - kyllo 14y ago
      That's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter. The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.
Udo 14y ago
I'm getting kind of an asshole reputation for always arguing with friends who are deeply into C/AM. But I'm also starting to realize it's exactly like arguing with a religious person - there is absolutely nothing you can say to make them realize their faith is based on fallacies. There is absolutely no correlation between the general intelligence of a person and the ridiculousness of their belief claims. You could be talking astrophysics one minute and the next you're into a strange shamanistic wonderland where science doesn't exist. I really do think it's a faith-like mental virus. On the whole, it doesn't worry me too much - everyone is entitled to their little domains of craziness and I know I have my own. But what does worry me is the observation that C/AM believers in my environment are almost always women. It feels like a big gaping hole in everything we achieved with women's rights and education. Within my extremely limited horizon of living in a western industrial society, this is in fact the single most worrying trend. It's like a large part of our women went to a parallel universe "girls school", whereas the men in the mean time learned about science and reasoning. I'm at a total loss as to where this gender disparity comes from, but there has to be a vector somewhere. If anyone has any ideas, I'm looking forward to hearing them. If there is anything to be done about this, I'd like to volunteer my time for it.
- JPKab 14y ago
  I've found that, at least amongst 20 and 30 something age groups, women tend to be more religious too. Now that is my crappy anecdotal observation. It would be interesting to see some real data on that. I'm convinced that the whole C/AM thing taps into an instinctive love of purity. We are wired to care about cleanliness and purity in our food sources. Perhaps women are wired even more this way (the fact that they have superior senses of smell to men might also explain it). The Nazi movement took advantage of many people's innate belief that purity of anything (in their case genetics) is a good thing no matter what. There was an article posted not too long ago about fireplaces, and how bad for you they really are. There are two kinds of people: those who will readily evaluate facts which contradict their pre-conceived beleifs, and those who will immediately dismiss them.
  - Udo 14y ago
    I really refuse to accept that women are just "wired for faith", it sounds too similar to the Victorian notion that somehow women are naturally wired for irrationality. There has to be a social reason why this spreads among women, there is a gap somewhere in science education that leaves women more vulnerable to this. And I actually watched it spread. The transmission seems to be helped by exploiting trusted relationships among network nodes, so to speak. But that still doesn't explain why someone is susceptible to the attack in the first place. I'm also skeptical about the purity idea, because it's an arbitrary (and wrong) definition of purity to begin with and there is really no reason why women should be hard-wired to fall for these things. This is traditionally the moment where completely made-up cavemen analogies are introduced, but those are exactly as unscientific as C/AM itself.
edem 14y ago
I think that you miss the point here: If paleo diet is not the silver bullet than what diet should I have? I'm not a paleo advocate by the way. I tried it out but I'm not having a paleo diet at the moment. I'm still trying to find some alternate diet which is proven to be healthy. It seems that this may be one of the most difficult endeavor I've ever undertaken. Any suggestions?
- darkarmani 14y ago
  > I think that you miss the point here: If paleo diet is not the silver bullet than what diet should I have? That's a little harsh. The point of the article is ruling out a diet, so your search is easier knowing it is based on bad science.
- analog 14y ago
  Has anyone claimed that the Paleo diet is unhealthy? From what I've seen the only complaints against it are that the claimed reason for it's effectiveness are not well supported. I don't have any studies but it certainly seems healthier than the high-carb, low-fat diet which was promoted by the medical establishment for so long.
  - freyr 14y ago
    For what it's worth, U.S. World & News Report annualy assembles a panel of diet and health experts (http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts) to judge a variety diets. In 2011 and 2012, the paleo diet ranked as the worst. The criteria were health, weight-loss, and ease of following. In terms of nutrition, safety, rating for diabetes, and rating for heart health, it scored a 2/5, 2.3/5, 2.1/5, and 2/5 respectively.
    - analog 14y ago
      That's pretty unscientific, purely based on the opinions of a collection of individuals. It also completely ignores the very personal nature of a diet. What's easy to follow for one person will be very difficult for another. And if you're rating a diet for heart health I'd like to actually see the rates of heart related illnesses for those following the diets.
babblefrog 14y ago
A couple of points: 1. Most or all of the mummies studied were from neolithic societies, not paleolithic. The only one that might be considered paleolithic is the Unangan, but even these are from decades after they were conquered by the Russians. So they may very well have had white flour and processed sugar in their diet. I couldn't find information about their diet during this period. 2. The time needed for natural selection to work. I'm not convinced by this one. The examples that were given would have had higher selection pressure on the young during their child-bearing years. I would guess that the selection pressure from diseases of old-age would be much less, and would take many more generations to be felt. Still some good points to be made about the naturalistic fallacy.
- skittles 14y ago
  Seems like even scientists don't have a good understanding of diet. I just watched a show that mentioned Henry VIII's diet. They mentioned how it made him fat because of all the meat he ate. I thought "that doesn't sound right" and looked it up. He didn't eat vegetables (considered peasant food at the time) and ate a lot of meat. What probably made him fat though was all the bread, desserts, ale, and wine mixed with sugar. If he stuck to meat and added some vegetables, he would have been fine.
darkarmani 14y ago
Does anyone know the claims regarding saturated fat and coconut oil? I have some friends who in the last 2 months have become zealots and they encourage "high quality" fats (coconut oil) and denounce canola oil.
- robbiep 14y ago
  It is well known in cardiovascular surgery circles that islander diets (which have high levels of coconut oil) have vey high levels of atherosclerosis. I have heard this comment many times in 4 years of medical school, and seen many islander patients (Australia has a deal with the French Government to perform tertiary care of New Caledonians) however have yet to come across a source for it
  - darkarmani 14y ago
    I think the Paleo argument is that it is the interaction of certain saturated fats and insulin response from high glycemic index foods that oxidize LDL cholesterol (?). I don't know any of the science here, so i could be paraphrasing wrong, but I'd love understand if this is as fringe as it sounds.
    - robbiep 14y ago
      Ah I see your point. I have some time tomorrow (bt 12-18 hrs from now) so will see what I can find specifically regarding this if you'd care to check back here, In the meantime here's some science of atherosclerosis - high glycemic index foods - scrap that - glucose and fructose in general is are reactive molecules - they are often drawn as a 6-carbon circle in organic chem but are actually moving in and out of a ionically bonded circle and a linear structure which is very reactive. It is relatively well understood that the 6 carbon carbohydrates are reactive enough to be capable of causing endothelial damage which can set off the inflammatory cascade that leads to atherosclerosis and high LDL levels will further exacerbate the problem. Come to think of it, maybe this answers your question?
      - 14y ago
up_and_up 14y ago
The problem with "Evidence Based Medicine" vs CAM are two-fold, according to my friend who is an MD in internal medicine at the local VA. 1. 'Evidenced based' medicine is not really 'Evidenced based' because (again this is according to an MD) 50% of what they practice has not been subjected to scientific study. 2. Also there is not the time nor funding to test every aspect and modality of CAM. So some CAM practice might really be working for patients but there is not time nor funding to discover why. This seems like yet another rant by some Physician whose 'religion' is actually evidence-based medicine.
- potatolicious 14y ago
  You're really going to base your entire argument around the purported statements of your doctor friend whose identity, statements, and views cannot be verified? You'ved made multiple comments in this thread that amount to exactly "nuh-uh! my doctor friend said!" In the spirit of yesterday's fallacy thread, this is both a (bad) appeal to authority and using anecdote as data.
  - up_and_up 14y ago
    Here is some 'evidence': http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=101041 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... "The number of reviews indicating that the modern biomedical interventions show either no effect or insufficient evidence is surprisingly high. Intterrater disagreements suggest a surprising degree of subjective interpretation involved in systematic reviews. Where patterns of disagreement emerged between authors and readers, authors tended to be more optimistic in their conclusions than the readers."
- jimworm 14y ago
  Just because current conventional medicine isn't entirely evidence-based does not excuse the claims of CAM from the requirement for evidence. Note that when an MD gives this statement: "take these antibiotics, then get some bed rest and take plenty of fluids", 2/3rds of the advice given is likely not based on evidence, yet there is a huge difference between that and a recommendation not based on any evidence at all.
venomsnake 14y ago
It is not about the paleo. First - while atherosclerosis may be a normal part of aging, does it say anything about ancient heart attacks and strokes? I don't care of the plaques in my arteries I care about not being dead from a heart attack. Also the influx of refined carbohydrates in our diet is a big change. So maybe we have not evolved yet to cope with them in the current amounts and purity. I think most fad diets have the following problems: 1. Little and improper science - so even if they work they can't explain why or how. 2. One size fits all - I invented the paleo diet without ever heard of it - once I decided to quit sugar and starches cold turkey - I have always loved raw nuts and vegetables, grilled meat and cheese. But this is not for everyone - alot of people will not find it tasty. So they eat something they hate - the result is they have problems adhering to eat and abandon it. 3. Government has failed to do its job on the nutrition front. Every recommendation is fought by the losing industry lobbyists, there is little exploitative science done etc. While every person should have the choice they also have to have access to transparent, true and scientifically proved nutritional information - otherwise we will always have the next wonder diet on which sizable portion of the population will be on. A lot of people will hurt themselves taking it to the extremes and so on ...
wmat 14y ago
I recently lost 30lbs by adopting a low-carb/real-food/paleo way of eating. As a result, I feel much better, sleep better, and have increased energy. My moods seem to be stabilizing and I feel more confident than ever. The decrease in weight has enabled me to exercise more comfortably, which in turn has resulted in an increased frequency of exercise, as it's now enjoyable. I can appreciate that the science behind the Paleo movement is not perfect, but the benefits I've realized from it far outweigh any questionable science employed to sell a few books by Loren Cordain along the way. It all basically boils down to application of the 80/20 rule to diet anyway.
rdtsc 14y ago
I skimmed the article but it seems to me it misses a key component of why people choose "alternatives". Both "naturalistic" and "old school" (as in 18th century and earlier probably) today seem to me to be a reaction against years of uncontrolled abuse, dangerous drugs, uncontrolled trials in the past, poisoning and dumping chemicals in the environment (ddt and such) without any regard for consequences. It is kind of this cavalier attitude towards human bodies and environment during an accelerated progress in the last century that made some (unfortunately) think twice and reject everything that modern medicine stands for. Another aspect of this "integrative" medical approach is basic psychology. Patients want to be understood and paid attention to. They want doctors to also ask them what they had for breakfast and how their son is doing. They'd want doctors to come to their house, put the hand on their head and say "you'll get better don't worry". All that is in contrast to a cold and robotic 5 minute chart check visits that are billed at $594.00/hour.
Tichy 14y ago
Ancient Egypt certainly was a culture with agriculture so citing mummy studies to debunk paleo diets does not make much sense. Also ommitting the studies about actual living hunter gatherer tribes does not lend the argument much credibility. I think paleo diet books should be scrutinized, but not be confused with actual science.
randomsearch 14y ago
I heartily recommend people check out "The Heretics" by Will Storr. The book points out, amongst other insights, the tendency of scientists to react irrationally to alternative medicine and other such phenomena. Whilst the scientific community is usually right on such things, we (I'm a scientist) do have a tendency to be very dismissive and even contemptuous of people who believe in alternative therapies (or religion, or a whole host of subjects that contradict scientific thinking). Seems scientists can be as dogmatic as their opponents. Thought-provoking stuff.
- mattgreenrocks 14y ago
  No one is immune to dogma. All our beliefs eventually trace back to some foundation, including the belief that logic is the only fount of truth. The question is whether we can be comfortable with that, or we have to project our own insecurities about it onto others. Can we tolerate the unbelief of other people, and treat them well? Or do we need everyone to be exactly like us? A lot of the screeds on the Internet reek of this tribalism. It's utterly tiring to read.
- illuminate 14y ago
  False equivalencies aren't particularly convincing, though. Discussing flaws in thinking is much preferable to saying "some scientists can be dogmatic!" yes, of course? That doesn't make non-evidence based medicine useful.
rsheridan6 14y ago
I don't see what atherosclerosis in mummies from post-neolithic cultures has to do with the paleo diet.
ef4 14y ago
My objection to this article is that it's posing a false dichotomy. Choosing our diet based purely on good solid science is not an option, because our scientific knowledge is still too limited. Any honest scientists will admit there's still a lot of complexity we don't fully understand. Which is precisely why there's so much exciting research going on right now (example: https://twitter.com/whsource https://twitter.com/whsource) Wherever we have solid evidence it absolutely needs to win out. But that's not the issue here. What we have here is a lot of fuzzy, plausible ideas that are extremely difficult to prove via experiment. If you want to say categorically that "the paleo diet" (or almost any other) is good or bad, then you need to do a gigantic, long-term, prospective, randomized study of actual human beings. Which is not practical. So we're left doing the best we can. We rely on heuristics to fill in the gaps. Eating the same things that your ancestors ate is not a bad start. (Granted, that's not necessarily "paleo").
fmurdockian 14y ago
The paleo movement has long since moved away from "eat what paleoliths ate" to focus on "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution".[1] Multiple thought leaders (e.g. Chriss Kresser[2] and Robb Wolf) have acknowledged genetic changes such as lactase persistence and changes in iron metabolism that have arisen in the last 10,000 years. Succesful inclusion of dietary grains however, requires fundamental changes in our digestive tract. From Paul Jaminet's "The Perfect Health Diet" pg 196: "Grasses evolved in concert with grazing mammals: both originated at the same and they became common together. [...] To reproduce successfully despite being regularly eaten, grasses evolved [...] toxic compounds specifically designed to sabotage digestion in mammals. [...] Grazing mammals have evolved defenses for these toxins-for instance, digestive organs such as rumens that allow the brunt of the toxins to be taken by bacteria." [3] So things like gluten, opioids, agglutinin, and adiponectin trigger autoimmune reactions, neuropathy, accelerate degenerative diseases, and prevent absorption of micronutrients. I find it ironic OP admits the studies of mummified remains were agricultural societies and then asserts "certainly atherosclerosis was common even among hunter-gatherers." Analysis of modern hunter gatherers and the most reliable accounts of hunter gatherer populations (researchers that actually lived among those they studied) attest to remarkably low occurrences of diseases of civilization while eating diets devoid of grains and high in saturated fat. [4] Rather than a "fascination with the noble savage", paleo eating is about optimizing food quality (i.e. low toxins) and approximating the macronutrient ratios of hunter-gatherer populations. Certainly a segment of the population may thrive on a grain based diet of 70-80% carbohydrate, but that isn't the case for many. As far as 'science based medicine' is concerned regarding paleo, there is one meaningful study I'm aware of. [5] However, I highly encourage a look at Robb Wolf's recent post,[1] a fantastic summary of the strengths EMB has (antiviral, trauma) compared to the weaknesses (degenerative diseases) and nutrition. He writes that most of what happens in medical practice is based off observation anyway, not double blind placebo controlled RCTs. I'm not against "evidence based" but it's not the only thing out there. Manipulating statistics [6] [7] and noncontextual studies are easily misleading. After experimenting (including a brief bout of vegetarianism) I've been eating paleo for about two years and am the leanest and most energetic I've ever been. The best way to solve the nutrition challenge is to change variables until you are happy with your health. [1] http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine-fraud-double-standards-ignorance/ http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine-fraud... My favorite line from this post is "based of this wacky stuff called the best data we had at the time" [2] http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-the-paleo-diet-with-mat-lalonde http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-t... [3] http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch19 http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch19 [4] http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch2 http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch2 [5] http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html [6]http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and-mortality/ http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and-mort... [7] "The Great Cholesterol Con" by Malcolm Kendrick and "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes are thorough analyses of the problems in the field of nutrition.
bane 14y ago
My paternal-grandfather, who lived to 102, when asked about diet responded, "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate" Anecdotally, the folks I know who practice some kind of extreme diet, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their diet. All that planning, charts, dietary interactions, classes, support groups, supplements, and books books books...it never sticks, they end up sick and it all seems to be just a giant waste of time and energy and potential. Now I'm going to say something that's going to be offensive to many folks out there, but it's coming from a similarly personal place and it's about how people use their control of food as a proxy to control their lives. This mechanism seems to show up in a wide variety of ways, extremely picky eaters, binge eating, anorexia, etc. Some rise the level of psychological or health disorder, some are just patterns and habits. One pattern that seems to show up over and over (and over) again is highly specialized diets for no specific health disorder. My mother jogs from diet to diet every few years, she dives deep into the diet she's currently landed on: Atkins, Paleo, Gluten-free, Vegetarian, etc. buys and reads dozens of books, finds food sources, and restocks the entire house. Growing up I was fed under probably no less than 6 or 7 diets of this sort. My mother is a treasure trove of semi-scientific nutritional information and alternative medicinal practices. My mother had a very out of control young childhood. She uses food and her diet as a mechanism to try and bring control to her life because that's something she can control. I've found a similar pattern in my friends who also practice a similar relationship to food. Divorced parents, absent fathers, attention draining mentally-ill siblings, alcoholic parents, long lists of childhood illnesses, etc. all seem to be the backstories of the people I know who have intense desires to control their foods. Anecdotally, it seems to be that these diets speak to a deep place in people. These diets, and the endless books and "information" available in these dietary communities seems to make them feel like if they can just learn the information in the diet, they can achieve some kind of control over that aspect of their life. It's like a complex OCD tick that's only satiated in this way. There's some endless justification for it, ethics, or evolution, or morals, or health or whatever. But it usually seems to just boil down to people who want and need to bring what they feel is order to a life that's careening out of control. It usually ends, like it does with all of my friends and family who go down this route, with some mysterious health problem that they try and solve by first doubling down on their diet, then is miraculously solved by just eating like a normal person for a few months. And inevitably they'll start to overthink their diet, and find some other direction to go and the cycle will repeat. Because their feeling of wellbeing can't overwhelm their feeling of establishing control. I've heard almost this exact story [1], word for word, dozens of times over the years. [1] - http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet-caused-health-problems-would-primal-paleo-or-real-food-be-better/ http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet-caused-... Eating healthy is not that hard, and it doesn't really require that much thought or time. You don't really have to read lots of books on the subject, or adhere to an ideology, write blogs, or read food manifestos. Just "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate".
mikeleung 14y ago
I've been on the paleo diet for about a year. Besides the fantastic results I've had with it, the main reason why I'm confident in it is the fact that what is known to be true in nutritional science changes all the time. Meanwhile, I'm very confident we know what our paleo ancestors ate for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the introduction of agriculture. Even if it is eventually proven that grains do not cause a problem with our diet, we should be confident that avoiding them should not be detrimental to our health given the fact that we didnt eat them for a huge span of human existence

72 points by tokenadult 14y ago

Thanks for finding this tokenadult. I've been trying to convince my wife (who has a degree in dietetics and a minor in anthropology/archeology) to write about this subject for a while, but food and diet are such visceral topics for people that she finds discussions of the topics incredibly frustrating. Food, language, gender norms, these are all fields of study where there is substantial research and a lot of resolute but unfounded claims by people with axes to grind, or products to sell. All of which is to say, there's not a lot of skepticism, even amongst populations who claim to be generally analytical and skeptical.

arethuza 14y ago
For anyone who needs a top-up on their scepticism in this area I can strongly recommend Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science": http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-science/ http://www.badscience.net/books/bad-science/
teach 14y ago
My wife is the same way. She has a PhD in nutrition and is also a registered dietitian, but she just can't muster the energy to argue online with people that have read two articles on Pub Med.

vitno 14y ago

and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part. I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet. Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoid high amounts of carbs & sugar now. How could I not feel better? It doesn't have anything to do with evolutionary adaptability. edit: knowtheory below is referring to something I edited out regarding an attempt to double blind myself to ensure this wasn't all in my head.

knowtheory 14y ago
See, that's just fine! It's awesome that you've found a diet that makes you feel better. But here's the thing. You can't double blind yourself. That's the whole issue with blind trials. Double blind trials require that you do not and can not determine whether you are in the treatment group or not. Additionally, unless you're having an unrelated person prepare the food, w/o any knowledge of which foods are in the "paleo" group vs the control group, you're not operating double blind. If it's just you and another person, it would be challenging to set up a double blind experiment (although i'd be interested to hear what you tried).
- vitno 14y ago
  I removed that. I figured that I would get some flak. :P I did have my roommate prepare the food. Another one of my roommates swapped/labeled the food and then went to class, no interaction. It was mostly because he didn't believe that I could feel it and that it was mostly in my head. (which I totally understand, I was pretty worried about that as well) We switched out white flour for some almond flour. We also did another one where he sweetened something using honey and another using corn syrup. (I could totally taste the difference there though) Certainly not rigorous, but enough to make me pretty sure it isn't entirely a placebo effect. I'm planning on getting a Celiac Sprue test at some point.
  - LaGrange 14y ago
    If you have adverse reactions to wheat products after provocation (even tiny amounts should trigger the effects), then it's indeed likely that you do have coeliac disease. About 1% of population have it, so it's not that surprising. Just remember that a test would require a proper, long provocation, otherwise you'll just get a negative from the biopsy because there's no intestinal damage anymore. On the other hand, if a diet helps, and provocations after, say, a month (but without your knowledge) make things go downhill fast, you can be sure enough. Welcome to the wonderful life where you get to check yoghurt for trace amounts of wheat products, and pizza is a holy grail (one of my closest friends is coeliac, for people in Amsterdam area, Woodstone in Haarlem makes good gluten-free pizza).

tcskeptic 14y ago

I'm not a Paleo dieter, but I am familiar with the gist of their claims. I do not understand how this study is a response to those claims. The 137 mummies studied are from "Individuals from ancient Egypt, ancient Peru, the Ancestral Puebloans of southwest America, and the Unangan of the Aleutian Islands were imaged." Of those we have 3 agricultural civilizations (Egytp, Peru, Pueblo) and one hunter gatherer (Aleutian). So 3/4 of the studied civilizations don't argue agains the basic Paleo claim at all. I can't see from looking the the links what the results from the Aleutian cohort were.

darkarmani 14y ago
No-true-paleo fallacy.
- bullsbarry 14y ago
  Not at all. The point OP was making is that these 3 cultures are decidedly NOT paleolithic, and it's disingenuous to use them as examples of the effects of the paleolithic diet on cardiovascular health.
- ef4 14y ago
  The no-true-scotsman fallacy implies a shifting or pedantically narrow definition. That's not applicable here. Paleo fans are very clear that they're trying to emulate pre-agricultural diets. That's the sine qua non of the Paleo fad. So it's totally legitimate that they would object to evidence about agricultural societies.
thomaspaine 14y ago
>Probable or definite atherosclerosis was noted in 47 (34%) of 137 mummies and in all four geographical populations: 29 (38%) of 76 ancient Egyptians, 13 (25%) of 51 ancient Peruvians, two (40%) of five Ancestral Puebloans, and three (60%) of five Unangan hunter gatherers (p=NS). I think the point is that atherosclerosis was just as prevalent in the hunter gatherer society as it was in the agricultural ones. Sample size is admittedly small though.

rohern 14y ago

>But how does one determine what the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was in the ancient past? Time and the decomposition it brings are brutal on the flimsy meat of which we are made, and it is uncommon to have access to anything other than bones, much less bodies intact enough to be examined for signs of atherosclerotic disease. Even so, however, there have been indications that the idea that ancient humans didn’t suffer from atherosclerosis is a comforting myth, the most recent of which is a study published a week ago online in The Lancet by Prof. Randall C. Thompson of Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and an international team of investigators entitled Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations. Basically, it was a study of 137 different mummies from four different geographic locations spanning 4,000 years. The whole time I was reading this I could only think, "science is great!" Thanks for posting this.

mkr-hn 14y ago

Paleo falls into the same trap as most ideologies. Some percent of True Believers become jerks about it ("but it's so obvious! Just look at [weakly correlated thing]!"), and end up making the whole group look bad. It's unfortunate, because most ideologies don't seem to be made to alienate. We get along fine as long as we don't bring up our pet beliefs.

tcskeptic 14y ago

seivan 14y ago

Dietdoctor.com <= Great source (and the guy is actually a real doctor).

teach 14y ago
Doctor as in MD? They don't necessarily know much about nutrition, either...

stiff 14y ago

Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional science that in general the more processed the food is the more harmful it is for us. There is also the reverse problem, illustrated by the condescending attitude toward herbalism in this article, of people who idealize modernity, and for example believe only medicine in the form of pills can be effective, even though plants may contain exactly the same chemical compounds. I am not saying there is no fraud in herbalism, sure there is plenty of it, but herbs in general clearly can have strong both positive and negative effect on physiology, which is really quite obvious if you consider the variety of herbs existing and that they all contain lots of different chemical compounds. In general I think it is ridiculous to ignore the thousands of years of experimentation and exploration of our ancestors just because it wasn't "science-based".

OmIsMyShield 14y ago
I think part of what the author sees as problematic is the loose definition of what "natural" means - to use your herbalism example, some people consider herbs to be automatically better than {mainstream_treatment_x} just because it is "natural", for a random value of "natural". So you are probably saying the same / a similar thing as the author with slightly different emphasis. edit: grammar, spelling mistakes, mainstream_treatment_x instead of "better tested"
klodolph 14y ago
I recently went to the doctor and got a recommendation to try one of three different medicines. Two were "supplements" and the third one was an off-label psychiatric medication. Each drug had its own set of side effects, and I chose one of the supplements because the off-label psychiatric drug required a prescription. I just didn't think "natural" versus "artificial" was relevant. The things that concern me about herbalism are simple: 1. The compounds in herbs are not tested as rigorously as "modern" drugs, at least by the FDA in the US. Knowledge of side effects and safe dosage is more limited. 2. Herbs are often subject to variation in dosages from pill to pill, because the source plant matter is variable and the actual yields are difficult to determine. It's not about ignoring thousands of years of experimentation, it's just that our standards are higher, and the old experiments were poorly conducted. We want to know the side effects and the interactions. We want to know the drug's mechanism. We want to know about the possible complications. We want to know the effective dose and the unsafe dose. And we want to be able to isolate things: herbs contain many chemicals: you might want one of the chemicals, but not want the side effects from one of the other chemicals. It reminds me of the almond extract you can buy at the store. The natural almond extract tastes the same as artificial almond extract, but the natural almond extract contains more cyanide. People pay a premium for things labeled "natural". The heuristic to use natural things works well for foods, but it's a harmful heuristic when considering drugs. It's also a bad heuristic for heating your home (wood fires), immunizing your children (let them die from whooping cough), family planning (pull out), et cetera.

api 14y ago

I have a friend who's into homeopathy and such, and I normally keep my mouth shut. But I have done some thinking about why. This friend is very smart, very intellectual, very curious, and not overly credulous. She's really a bit of a nerd. From my few conversations on the matter, the thing that's jumped out at me is this: She's drawn to alternative medicine because it's open source. Like many nerds, she hates closed proprietary systems and loathes bureaucracy. If alt-med worked, it would be vastly superior to conventional "industrial" medicine. The latter is bureaucratic, run by closed guilds, closed source, and radiates this standoffish "you are an idiot, do not ask questions" mentality. By contrast alt-med is open. Anyone can learn about it. Anyone can become a practitioner. Anyone can experiment. It's tolerant of differences of opinion to a much greater extent than conventional medicine. It comes off as welcoming, inviting, and engaging. Of course, I understand some of the reasons medicine is the way it is. Unlike hacking code on a computer, screwing up medicine can really hurt people. (Code on a computer generally can't, unless you're talking about certain kinds of specialized areas.) But it does seem to me that this is part of the appeal of alt-med. The other appeal, I think, is escape from the bureaucratic hell that is conventional medicine. Alt-med is actually more free-enterprise. There is more patient choice. It's less expensive. My wife and I just had a baby, and dealing with the insurance company has been a living hell. Edit: one more observation. We've tried a little bit of alt-med type stuff to varying degrees of success. I think I can also say this, and I think it goes a long way to explaining alt-med's popularity. The bedside manner you get with "alternative" practitioners is vastly better. I mean huge orders of magnitude better. We have a pretty good doctor and a pretty good hospital, and even then we occasionally feel like meat. And ours is really above average in terms of doctor-patient relations and comfort. I've heard some real slaughterhouse horror stories, particularly around women giving birth in ordinary hospitals. I have a relative who has such a story. She really felt like a piece of beef, and the doctor was a real jerk. The physical design of the spaces is better too. Go into an alt-med clinic and it feels warm, welcoming, calming. Go into a hospital or a conventional doctors' office and it looks like a car repair shop. Again -- to draw an analogy to the computer industry -- Apple has proven just how much aesthetics matter. Apple's products are generally not technically superior, but they are often vastly superior aesthetically and in terms of usability.

nathan_long 14y ago

stuaxo 14y ago

"undergird" .. !?

smackay 14y ago
yup, it's good. From Merriam-Webster: "to form the basis or foundation of : strengthen, support <facts and statistics subtly undergird his commentary"

JPKab 14y ago

I agree with a lot of what this article says regarding the "naturalistic fallacy",etc. However, this quote is an example of shallow thinking that drives me nuts: "Of course, it’s hard not to note that cancer and heart disease are primarily diseases of aging, and life expectancy was so much lower back in the day that a much smaller percentage of the population lived to advanced ages" Life expectancy FROM BIRTH has risen dramatically, but if you rule out those who died before they reached 5 years old, and rule out violent deaths and/or viral/bacterial plagues, you begin to realize that life expectancy is not much higher today.

kyllo 14y ago
I came here to post the same thing. This is its own fallacy. It was used to market estrogen supplementation, among other spurious remedies, to post-menopausal women. "Women didn't used to live very long after menopause--the life expectancy was only about 50. You need to take estrogen pills to keep you healthy into old age." This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. But then they found out that the estrogen pills were causing breast cancer, so that put a stop to that.
- darkarmani 14y ago
  > This of course was people using statistics to lie. The average life expectancy was lower primarily due to high infant mortality. Life expectancy is NOT the average age at death. Just because lower infant mortality raises the life expectancy, doesn't mean that the average age at death hasn't gone up. I agree with your life expectancy claim do, but it doesn't mean the opposite is true either.
  - kyllo 14y ago
    That's a true statement--infant mortality has declined and average age at death has also increased, but the increases in average life expectancy are much more greatly attributable to the former than to the latter. The fallacy is "{disease} is a disease of old age, and people didn't used to live past {average caveman life expectancy}. Therefore humans almost never experienced {disease} until modern times." This is very far from the truth, and is usually delivered as part of a sales pitch. I was surprised to see it repeated in the OP almost verbatim. The article debunks several other fallacies but, disappointingly, perpetuates this one.

Udo 14y ago

I'm getting kind of an asshole reputation for always arguing with friends who are deeply into C/AM. But I'm also starting to realize it's exactly like arguing with a religious person - there is absolutely nothing you can say to make them realize their faith is based on fallacies. There is absolutely no correlation between the general intelligence of a person and the ridiculousness of their belief claims. You could be talking astrophysics one minute and the next you're into a strange shamanistic wonderland where science doesn't exist. I really do think it's a faith-like mental virus. On the whole, it doesn't worry me too much - everyone is entitled to their little domains of craziness and I know I have my own. But what does worry me is the observation that C/AM believers in my environment are almost always women. It feels like a big gaping hole in everything we achieved with women's rights and education. Within my extremely limited horizon of living in a western industrial society, this is in fact the single most worrying trend. It's like a large part of our women went to a parallel universe "girls school", whereas the men in the mean time learned about science and reasoning. I'm at a total loss as to where this gender disparity comes from, but there has to be a vector somewhere. If anyone has any ideas, I'm looking forward to hearing them. If there is anything to be done about this, I'd like to volunteer my time for it.

JPKab 14y ago
I've found that, at least amongst 20 and 30 something age groups, women tend to be more religious too. Now that is my crappy anecdotal observation. It would be interesting to see some real data on that. I'm convinced that the whole C/AM thing taps into an instinctive love of purity. We are wired to care about cleanliness and purity in our food sources. Perhaps women are wired even more this way (the fact that they have superior senses of smell to men might also explain it). The Nazi movement took advantage of many people's innate belief that purity of anything (in their case genetics) is a good thing no matter what. There was an article posted not too long ago about fireplaces, and how bad for you they really are. There are two kinds of people: those who will readily evaluate facts which contradict their pre-conceived beleifs, and those who will immediately dismiss them.
- Udo 14y ago
  I really refuse to accept that women are just "wired for faith", it sounds too similar to the Victorian notion that somehow women are naturally wired for irrationality. There has to be a social reason why this spreads among women, there is a gap somewhere in science education that leaves women more vulnerable to this. And I actually watched it spread. The transmission seems to be helped by exploiting trusted relationships among network nodes, so to speak. But that still doesn't explain why someone is susceptible to the attack in the first place. I'm also skeptical about the purity idea, because it's an arbitrary (and wrong) definition of purity to begin with and there is really no reason why women should be hard-wired to fall for these things. This is traditionally the moment where completely made-up cavemen analogies are introduced, but those are exactly as unscientific as C/AM itself.

edem 14y ago

I think that you miss the point here: If paleo diet is not the silver bullet than what diet should I have? I'm not a paleo advocate by the way. I tried it out but I'm not having a paleo diet at the moment. I'm still trying to find some alternate diet which is proven to be healthy. It seems that this may be one of the most difficult endeavor I've ever undertaken. Any suggestions?

darkarmani 14y ago
> I think that you miss the point here: If paleo diet is not the silver bullet than what diet should I have? That's a little harsh. The point of the article is ruling out a diet, so your search is easier knowing it is based on bad science.
analog 14y ago
Has anyone claimed that the Paleo diet is unhealthy? From what I've seen the only complaints against it are that the claimed reason for it's effectiveness are not well supported. I don't have any studies but it certainly seems healthier than the high-carb, low-fat diet which was promoted by the medical establishment for so long.
- freyr 14y ago
  For what it's worth, U.S. World & News Report annualy assembles a panel of diet and health experts (http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts http://health.usnews.com/best-diet/experts) to judge a variety diets. In 2011 and 2012, the paleo diet ranked as the worst. The criteria were health, weight-loss, and ease of following. In terms of nutrition, safety, rating for diabetes, and rating for heart health, it scored a 2/5, 2.3/5, 2.1/5, and 2/5 respectively.
  - analog 14y ago
    That's pretty unscientific, purely based on the opinions of a collection of individuals. It also completely ignores the very personal nature of a diet. What's easy to follow for one person will be very difficult for another. And if you're rating a diet for heart health I'd like to actually see the rates of heart related illnesses for those following the diets.

babblefrog 14y ago

A couple of points: 1. Most or all of the mummies studied were from neolithic societies, not paleolithic. The only one that might be considered paleolithic is the Unangan, but even these are from decades after they were conquered by the Russians. So they may very well have had white flour and processed sugar in their diet. I couldn't find information about their diet during this period. 2. The time needed for natural selection to work. I'm not convinced by this one. The examples that were given would have had higher selection pressure on the young during their child-bearing years. I would guess that the selection pressure from diseases of old-age would be much less, and would take many more generations to be felt. Still some good points to be made about the naturalistic fallacy.

skittles 14y ago
Seems like even scientists don't have a good understanding of diet. I just watched a show that mentioned Henry VIII's diet. They mentioned how it made him fat because of all the meat he ate. I thought "that doesn't sound right" and looked it up. He didn't eat vegetables (considered peasant food at the time) and ate a lot of meat. What probably made him fat though was all the bread, desserts, ale, and wine mixed with sugar. If he stuck to meat and added some vegetables, he would have been fine.

darkarmani 14y ago

Does anyone know the claims regarding saturated fat and coconut oil? I have some friends who in the last 2 months have become zealots and they encourage "high quality" fats (coconut oil) and denounce canola oil.

robbiep 14y ago
It is well known in cardiovascular surgery circles that islander diets (which have high levels of coconut oil) have vey high levels of atherosclerosis. I have heard this comment many times in 4 years of medical school, and seen many islander patients (Australia has a deal with the French Government to perform tertiary care of New Caledonians) however have yet to come across a source for it
- darkarmani 14y ago
  I think the Paleo argument is that it is the interaction of certain saturated fats and insulin response from high glycemic index foods that oxidize LDL cholesterol (?). I don't know any of the science here, so i could be paraphrasing wrong, but I'd love understand if this is as fringe as it sounds.
  - robbiep 14y ago
    Ah I see your point. I have some time tomorrow (bt 12-18 hrs from now) so will see what I can find specifically regarding this if you'd care to check back here, In the meantime here's some science of atherosclerosis - high glycemic index foods - scrap that - glucose and fructose in general is are reactive molecules - they are often drawn as a 6-carbon circle in organic chem but are actually moving in and out of a ionically bonded circle and a linear structure which is very reactive. It is relatively well understood that the 6 carbon carbohydrates are reactive enough to be capable of causing endothelial damage which can set off the inflammatory cascade that leads to atherosclerosis and high LDL levels will further exacerbate the problem. Come to think of it, maybe this answers your question?
    - 14y ago

up_and_up 14y ago

The problem with "Evidence Based Medicine" vs CAM are two-fold, according to my friend who is an MD in internal medicine at the local VA. 1. 'Evidenced based' medicine is not really 'Evidenced based' because (again this is according to an MD) 50% of what they practice has not been subjected to scientific study. 2. Also there is not the time nor funding to test every aspect and modality of CAM. So some CAM practice might really be working for patients but there is not time nor funding to discover why. This seems like yet another rant by some Physician whose 'religion' is actually evidence-based medicine.

potatolicious 14y ago
You're really going to base your entire argument around the purported statements of your doctor friend whose identity, statements, and views cannot be verified? You'ved made multiple comments in this thread that amount to exactly "nuh-uh! my doctor friend said!" In the spirit of yesterday's fallacy thread, this is both a (bad) appeal to authority and using anecdote as data.
- up_and_up 14y ago
  Here is some 'evidence': http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=101041 http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag... "The number of reviews indicating that the modern biomedical interventions show either no effect or insufficient evidence is surprisingly high. Intterrater disagreements suggest a surprising degree of subjective interpretation involved in systematic reviews. Where patterns of disagreement emerged between authors and readers, authors tended to be more optimistic in their conclusions than the readers."
jimworm 14y ago
Just because current conventional medicine isn't entirely evidence-based does not excuse the claims of CAM from the requirement for evidence. Note that when an MD gives this statement: "take these antibiotics, then get some bed rest and take plenty of fluids", 2/3rds of the advice given is likely not based on evidence, yet there is a huge difference between that and a recommendation not based on any evidence at all.

venomsnake 14y ago

It is not about the paleo. First - while atherosclerosis may be a normal part of aging, does it say anything about ancient heart attacks and strokes? I don't care of the plaques in my arteries I care about not being dead from a heart attack. Also the influx of refined carbohydrates in our diet is a big change. So maybe we have not evolved yet to cope with them in the current amounts and purity. I think most fad diets have the following problems: 1. Little and improper science - so even if they work they can't explain why or how. 2. One size fits all - I invented the paleo diet without ever heard of it - once I decided to quit sugar and starches cold turkey - I have always loved raw nuts and vegetables, grilled meat and cheese. But this is not for everyone - alot of people will not find it tasty. So they eat something they hate - the result is they have problems adhering to eat and abandon it. 3. Government has failed to do its job on the nutrition front. Every recommendation is fought by the losing industry lobbyists, there is little exploitative science done etc. While every person should have the choice they also have to have access to transparent, true and scientifically proved nutritional information - otherwise we will always have the next wonder diet on which sizable portion of the population will be on. A lot of people will hurt themselves taking it to the extremes and so on ...

wmat 14y ago

I recently lost 30lbs by adopting a low-carb/real-food/paleo way of eating. As a result, I feel much better, sleep better, and have increased energy. My moods seem to be stabilizing and I feel more confident than ever. The decrease in weight has enabled me to exercise more comfortably, which in turn has resulted in an increased frequency of exercise, as it's now enjoyable. I can appreciate that the science behind the Paleo movement is not perfect, but the benefits I've realized from it far outweigh any questionable science employed to sell a few books by Loren Cordain along the way. It all basically boils down to application of the 80/20 rule to diet anyway.

rdtsc 14y ago

I skimmed the article but it seems to me it misses a key component of why people choose "alternatives". Both "naturalistic" and "old school" (as in 18th century and earlier probably) today seem to me to be a reaction against years of uncontrolled abuse, dangerous drugs, uncontrolled trials in the past, poisoning and dumping chemicals in the environment (ddt and such) without any regard for consequences. It is kind of this cavalier attitude towards human bodies and environment during an accelerated progress in the last century that made some (unfortunately) think twice and reject everything that modern medicine stands for. Another aspect of this "integrative" medical approach is basic psychology. Patients want to be understood and paid attention to. They want doctors to also ask them what they had for breakfast and how their son is doing. They'd want doctors to come to their house, put the hand on their head and say "you'll get better don't worry". All that is in contrast to a cold and robotic 5 minute chart check visits that are billed at $594.00/hour.

Tichy 14y ago

Ancient Egypt certainly was a culture with agriculture so citing mummy studies to debunk paleo diets does not make much sense. Also ommitting the studies about actual living hunter gatherer tribes does not lend the argument much credibility. I think paleo diet books should be scrutinized, but not be confused with actual science.

randomsearch 14y ago

I heartily recommend people check out "The Heretics" by Will Storr. The book points out, amongst other insights, the tendency of scientists to react irrationally to alternative medicine and other such phenomena. Whilst the scientific community is usually right on such things, we (I'm a scientist) do have a tendency to be very dismissive and even contemptuous of people who believe in alternative therapies (or religion, or a whole host of subjects that contradict scientific thinking). Seems scientists can be as dogmatic as their opponents. Thought-provoking stuff.

mattgreenrocks 14y ago
No one is immune to dogma. All our beliefs eventually trace back to some foundation, including the belief that logic is the only fount of truth. The question is whether we can be comfortable with that, or we have to project our own insecurities about it onto others. Can we tolerate the unbelief of other people, and treat them well? Or do we need everyone to be exactly like us? A lot of the screeds on the Internet reek of this tribalism. It's utterly tiring to read.
illuminate 14y ago
False equivalencies aren't particularly convincing, though. Discussing flaws in thinking is much preferable to saying "some scientists can be dogmatic!" yes, of course? That doesn't make non-evidence based medicine useful.

rsheridan6 14y ago

I don't see what atherosclerosis in mummies from post-neolithic cultures has to do with the paleo diet.

ef4 14y ago

My objection to this article is that it's posing a false dichotomy. Choosing our diet based purely on good solid science is not an option, because our scientific knowledge is still too limited. Any honest scientists will admit there's still a lot of complexity we don't fully understand. Which is precisely why there's so much exciting research going on right now (example: https://twitter.com/whsource https://twitter.com/whsource) Wherever we have solid evidence it absolutely needs to win out. But that's not the issue here. What we have here is a lot of fuzzy, plausible ideas that are extremely difficult to prove via experiment. If you want to say categorically that "the paleo diet" (or almost any other) is good or bad, then you need to do a gigantic, long-term, prospective, randomized study of actual human beings. Which is not practical. So we're left doing the best we can. We rely on heuristics to fill in the gaps. Eating the same things that your ancestors ate is not a bad start. (Granted, that's not necessarily "paleo").

fmurdockian 14y ago

The paleo movement has long since moved away from "eat what paleoliths ate" to focus on "nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution".[1] Multiple thought leaders (e.g. Chriss Kresser[2] and Robb Wolf) have acknowledged genetic changes such as lactase persistence and changes in iron metabolism that have arisen in the last 10,000 years. Succesful inclusion of dietary grains however, requires fundamental changes in our digestive tract. From Paul Jaminet's "The Perfect Health Diet" pg 196: "Grasses evolved in concert with grazing mammals: both originated at the same and they became common together. [...] To reproduce successfully despite being regularly eaten, grasses evolved [...] toxic compounds specifically designed to sabotage digestion in mammals. [...] Grazing mammals have evolved defenses for these toxins-for instance, digestive organs such as rumens that allow the brunt of the toxins to be taken by bacteria." [3] So things like gluten, opioids, agglutinin, and adiponectin trigger autoimmune reactions, neuropathy, accelerate degenerative diseases, and prevent absorption of micronutrients. I find it ironic OP admits the studies of mummified remains were agricultural societies and then asserts "certainly atherosclerosis was common even among hunter-gatherers." Analysis of modern hunter gatherers and the most reliable accounts of hunter gatherer populations (researchers that actually lived among those they studied) attest to remarkably low occurrences of diseases of civilization while eating diets devoid of grains and high in saturated fat. [4] Rather than a "fascination with the noble savage", paleo eating is about optimizing food quality (i.e. low toxins) and approximating the macronutrient ratios of hunter-gatherer populations. Certainly a segment of the population may thrive on a grain based diet of 70-80% carbohydrate, but that isn't the case for many. As far as 'science based medicine' is concerned regarding paleo, there is one meaningful study I'm aware of. [5] However, I highly encourage a look at Robb Wolf's recent post,[1] a fantastic summary of the strengths EMB has (antiviral, trauma) compared to the weaknesses (degenerative diseases) and nutrition. He writes that most of what happens in medical practice is based off observation anyway, not double blind placebo controlled RCTs. I'm not against "evidence based" but it's not the only thing out there. Manipulating statistics [6] [7] and noncontextual studies are easily misleading. After experimenting (including a brief bout of vegetarianism) I've been eating paleo for about two years and am the leanest and most energetic I've ever been. The best way to solve the nutrition challenge is to change variables until you are happy with your health. [1] http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine-fraud-double-standards-ignorance/ http://robbwolf.com/2013/03/15/evidence-based-medicine-fraud... My favorite line from this post is "based of this wacky stuff called the best data we had at the time" [2] http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-the-paleo-diet-with-mat-lalonde http://chriskresser.com/rhr-what-science-really-says-about-t... [3] http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch19 http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch19 [4] http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch2 http://perfecthealthdiet.com/notes/#Ch2 [5] http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html http://www.staffanlindeberg.com/DiabetesStudy.html [6]http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and-mortality/ http://www.zoeharcombe.com/2013/03/meat-consumption-and-mort... [7] "The Great Cholesterol Con" by Malcolm Kendrick and "Good Calories Bad Calories" by Gary Taubes are thorough analyses of the problems in the field of nutrition.

bane 14y ago

My paternal-grandfather, who lived to 102, when asked about diet responded, "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate" Anecdotally, the folks I know who practice some kind of extreme diet, seem to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about their diet. All that planning, charts, dietary interactions, classes, support groups, supplements, and books books books...it never sticks, they end up sick and it all seems to be just a giant waste of time and energy and potential. Now I'm going to say something that's going to be offensive to many folks out there, but it's coming from a similarly personal place and it's about how people use their control of food as a proxy to control their lives. This mechanism seems to show up in a wide variety of ways, extremely picky eaters, binge eating, anorexia, etc. Some rise the level of psychological or health disorder, some are just patterns and habits. One pattern that seems to show up over and over (and over) again is highly specialized diets for no specific health disorder. My mother jogs from diet to diet every few years, she dives deep into the diet she's currently landed on: Atkins, Paleo, Gluten-free, Vegetarian, etc. buys and reads dozens of books, finds food sources, and restocks the entire house. Growing up I was fed under probably no less than 6 or 7 diets of this sort. My mother is a treasure trove of semi-scientific nutritional information and alternative medicinal practices. My mother had a very out of control young childhood. She uses food and her diet as a mechanism to try and bring control to her life because that's something she can control. I've found a similar pattern in my friends who also practice a similar relationship to food. Divorced parents, absent fathers, attention draining mentally-ill siblings, alcoholic parents, long lists of childhood illnesses, etc. all seem to be the backstories of the people I know who have intense desires to control their foods. Anecdotally, it seems to be that these diets speak to a deep place in people. These diets, and the endless books and "information" available in these dietary communities seems to make them feel like if they can just learn the information in the diet, they can achieve some kind of control over that aspect of their life. It's like a complex OCD tick that's only satiated in this way. There's some endless justification for it, ethics, or evolution, or morals, or health or whatever. But it usually seems to just boil down to people who want and need to bring what they feel is order to a life that's careening out of control. It usually ends, like it does with all of my friends and family who go down this route, with some mysterious health problem that they try and solve by first doubling down on their diet, then is miraculously solved by just eating like a normal person for a few months. And inevitably they'll start to overthink their diet, and find some other direction to go and the cycle will repeat. Because their feeling of wellbeing can't overwhelm their feeling of establishing control. I've heard almost this exact story [1], word for word, dozens of times over the years. [1] - http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet-caused-health-problems-would-primal-paleo-or-real-food-be-better/ http://kristensraw.com/blog/2013/03/17/my-vegan-diet-caused-... Eating healthy is not that hard, and it doesn't really require that much thought or time. You don't really have to read lots of books on the subject, or adhere to an ideology, write blogs, or read food manifestos. Just "eat variety, eat in moderation, have lots of colors on your plate".

mikeleung 14y ago

I've been on the paleo diet for about a year. Besides the fantastic results I've had with it, the main reason why I'm confident in it is the fact that what is known to be true in nutritional science changes all the time. Meanwhile, I'm very confident we know what our paleo ancestors ate for hundreds of thousands of years prior to the introduction of agriculture. Even if it is eventually proven that grains do not cause a problem with our diet, we should be confident that avoiding them should not be detrimental to our health given the fact that we didnt eat them for a huge span of human existence