PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

It's going to be another blockbuster coffee table all-American diet book, for sure. While our coffee tables are already groaning under the weight of all of our previous revolutionary ideas on nutrition in this country.

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

If you, a priori, find his reasoning on grains flawed because you believe Price, how could it not reinforce your thinking?

Some of Cordain's conclusions are illogical, and one goes against my personal experience. This has nothing to do with Price.

23,000 years ago is still not very far back in evolutionary time.

The point was to show that grain eating was predominant is some groups prior to agriculture.
You are aware that dairy consumption has altered genetics in a shorter time period, so 23,000 years has some evolutionary significance.

Here is a link to Cordain's review article Cereal Grains: humanity's double edged sword - you have probably read it, but for the benefit of others here I highly recommend it. It is 60 pages with 342 references.

Perhaps you have a similar scholarly article on the essential role of grains in human evolution and health, if not by Dr. Price, by someone else?

Sorry, can't help you there.
But don't place too much faith in "scholarship". If what I read on Cordain's website is any indicator of his capability, then his 60-page review article is probably similarly flawed.

I have tried to find peer-reviewed research by Dr. Weston A. Price, but I can't find any papers on pubmed. Maybe you could point to some of his peer reviewed original research or review articles.

Like all good contrarians, his work was greatly ignored by the PTB at the time, so I doubt that you'll find any peer-reviewed articles. And more to the point, Price wasn't doing experimental research -- he was primarily documenting the health condition and dietary habits of some non-industrialized groups around the world -- so peer review isn't really needed.

I did find this book review on the "Price Foundation" website, which seems a bit puzzling, given your stance.

The No-Grain Diet

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, Dutton, 2003
Review by Sally Fallon

A qualified Thumbs Up for this sensible and practical weight loss book.

As you can read, it is for weight loss -- not a diet for everyday life. Therefore, not inconsistent with my views.

It is clear you are trying to discredit what I have to say by pointing out inconsistencies in a group that I recommend (WAP), but don't you think you're reaching just a bit too much here?
Also, as you stated below, I have pointed out in a previous post that I do advocate everything that WAP says.

I have spent some time on the WAP website diligently searching for a scientific rationale for the necessary consumption of grains and can't find a single one.

I have given you my reasoning on this already.

Instead, all I can find are admonitions that it must be prepared meticulously to avoid injury and article about what to do once you are diagnosed with celiac disease which is caused by eating wheat.
I'll stick to food that I don't need to defend myself against, thank you.

Do you take any precautions to protect yourself from parasites or bacteria that can be found in meat? Like cook it? Or if eating tartare (raw meat), freezing it for 14 days, as recommended by the USDA?
Again, you reasoning is illogical, and your criticism not well thought out.

I have pointed out that there is zero dietary requirement for carbohydrates.

Let me ask you something . . . do you ever get the desire to eat grains? If you walk by a bakery and catch that wonder fragrance of fresh-baked bread, don't you feel something inside of you saying, "I want that".
Ignore your body's messages at your own peril . . . .

You think that carbohydrates are not necessary because you cannot find any scientific evidence to that effect. But just remember that paleo people spent thousands of years eating starchy foods, and it is pure arrogance in my opinion for you to think you can ignore that evolutionary heritage. You need carbohydrates in your diet, even if scientists don't know why.

"Katherine Czapp was raised on a three-generation, self-sufficient mixed family farm in rural Michigan".

The appelation echoes your self-suffient farm descriptor- are you sure you have no present or past affiliation with the WAP foundation? Was it a WAP newsletter you wrote? I understand you don't agree with everything on the foundation website, as I don't endorse all on Cordain's.

Again, you are trying desperately to discredit me by associating me with WAP. I will say it again, I receive no financial gain or derive any other benefit from WAP other than learning from their publications. I am not an employee or officer of WAP. I have never been to their offices. My opinions about WAP are not influenced by any self-interest, since I receive nothing from them. And, as you say, I clearly state that I don't agree with everything they say.
In the future, can we stick to discussing the issues and leave off with the ad hominem attempts to discredit my postings?

To me, the burden of proof remains with the grain-advocators. I do not think tradition or the interesting but purely empirical observations of modern-era primitives by a Dentist* in the 1930s is enough to establish the necessity of grains, in the face of more compelling evidence from biochemistry, archaeology and medicine.

I think it is the best evidence available.

Archeology cannot tell us much about plant foods, since they do not preserve as bones do.
Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there.
And medicine . . . well, what do they know about nutrition?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

You are aware that dairy consumption has altered genetics in a shorter time period, so 23,000 years has some evolutionary significance.

I include dairy elimination as later steps along the path. There has been some selection pressure with re: to dairy, but not enough to make it safe for more than a portion of humanity. The neotony of lactulose is well know, as well as the fact that many populations don't have it. This only reinforces my views of grains. Dairy is just not as problematic.

"....don't place too much faith in "scholarship"

"I doubt that you'll find any peer-reviewed articles."

"-- so peer review isn't really needed".

"You need carbohydrates in your diet, even if scientists don't know why".

These kinds of statements confirm my skepticism.

It is clear you are trying to discredit what I have to say by pointing out inconsistencies in a group that I recommend (WAP)

I am sorry, but you directed me to WAP and rather strongly endorsed them.
Feel free to give me a link there that provides the reasoning to the essentiality of grains - other than "we need them but scientists cannot say why, Weston told us so."

Do you take any precautions to protect yourself from parasites or bacteria that can be found in meat? Like cook it? Or if eating tartare (raw meat)

Actually that depends on the source, for me at least.

There is a big difference here. Meat may be eaten quite safely raw if it is not infected, this is a stochastic event. It is not inherently inedible without heat. Wheat is absolutely inedible if not cooked, and according to WAP must in addition still be meticulously prepared by soaking, etc.

Let me ask you something . . . do you ever get the desire to eat grains? If you walk by a bakery and catch that wonder fragrance of fresh-baked bread, don't you feel something inside of you saying, "I want that".
Ignore your body's messages at your own peril . . . .

Bread, pasta, muffins, even pizza, never. I used to love chocolate chip cookies but now I cannot eat more than half of one without feeling nauseated.

Very starchy foods (baked potato) and sugar laden foods like cookies are nearly the same on a per-gram basis in their insulin response, despite some differences in their so-called glycemic index. This glycemic load ("area under the curve" of insulin secretion over time required to keep blood glucose normal) is substantial and even with massive insulin secretion by the pancreas to handle the load, there are variations in glucose levels, and compensatory hormonal chages like the surge in epinephrine that account for the "sugar rush" we all know. Once you are deconditioned to this, you actually don't tolerate it as well even if you might psychologically crave this addictive property of sugar and starches, the same way you might other physically addictive substances like cocaine and alcohol. You lose your tolerance for them once you are clean.

Many folks' bodies tell them to have a cigarette pretty regularly.

You think that carbohydrates are not necessary because you cannot find any scientific evidence to that effect.

That plus the copious evidence of their harm (nutritional deficiencies and autoimmune disorders, celiac disease)

...I receive no financial gain or derive any other benefit from WAP other than learning from their publications.

You directed me there and I thought you had pretty strongly identified with them. After reading them, I actually find less advocacy of grains than you seemed to suggest. I certainly did not say you were receiving financial gain from them. One can advocate strongly and sincerely for a non-profit with no thought of personal gain. Even if you were a part of that organization, it would not change the way I evaluate your claims.

[jk]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

It was devoted to Fuhrman's diet, which is as dangerous as Ornish's diet from what I can see.

what's interesting to me, at the moment, is looking for commonalities among the variety of proposed "healthy diets." fuhrman, like taubes [i gather, i've ordered his book but have yet to receive it, so i'm going on your references to him], advocates cutting out all refined grains and sugar, which is step #1 on your own recommended steps. otoh, fuhrman avoids the animal fats you recommend in step #2. he allows whole grains and fruit, which you proscribe, but if you read his actual work, what he recommends is a tremendous quantity of vegetables to be consumed before you add anything else. the idea is that you are so full of vegetables you don't have room for much else. this results in far more carb than fat, but overall not so much carb compared to a standard diet, i.e. this is a low cal diet. i saw a comparison of a fuhrman and eades [i think, i don't have the time right now to go back and find the link] diet: the fuhrman diet had a much higher proportion of carbs, but almost all from vegetables, and a total of only 1600 calories, whereas the locarb higher fat diet had 2200.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

what's interesting to me, at the moment, is looking for commonalities among the variety of proposed "healthy diets." fuhrman, like taubes [i gather, i've ordered his book but have yet to receive it, so i'm going on your references to him], advocates cutting out all refined grains and sugar, which is step #1 on your own recommended steps. otoh, fuhrman avoids the animal fats you recommend in step #2. he allows whole grains and fruit, which you proscribe, but if you read his actual work, what he recommends is a tremendous quantity of vegetables to be consumed before you add anything else. the idea is that you are so full of vegetables you don't have room for much else. this results in far more carb than fat, but overall not so much carb compared to a standard diet, i.e. this is a low cal diet. i saw a comparison of a fuhrman and eades [i think, i don't have the time right now to go back and find the link] diet: the fuhrman diet had a much higher proportion of carbs, but almost all from vegetables, and a total of only 1600 calories, whereas the locarb higher fat diet had 2200.

Thanks JK

I've bought Fuhrman's book (just delivered from amazon yesterday) and will post a review at some point. My comment above is a first impression - I promise I will give the book its due. I am pleased to see the number of references he has (unlike many others) -but the fact -checking so far is not looking so good.

ex 1 He flatly states that you must destroy muscle to make the small amount of glucose you need when you are in ketosis. I've seen this error elsewhere as well on the web. It is just false. Two glycerol molecules equals one glucose molecule. When you are in ketosis you are liberating fatty acids from the triglyceride molecules, and thereby freeing up plenty of the glycerol backbone to convert to glucose. (Also proteins turnover amino acids constantly -it is a high carb,low protein diet that would require muscle breakdown, as we can't synthesize essential amino acids - Fuhrman has his concern backwards, IMO)

ex 2 He repeats the canard about ketogenic or even near ketogenic diets being dangerous. He seems to be good about providing references, so I checked his one reference. It is from Medical Tribune - I can't find the reference or the author in pubmed - A pubmed search of ketogenic diets shows no mention of adverse side effects or danger among the 53 abstracts I get with "ketogenic diet". As you know, ketogenic diets can treat seizure disorders with some success and are often up to 80% fat by calories - they make atkins look like ornish. For a very interesting blog by a veterinarian with training in biochemistry who lives on an 80% fat diet (mine is about 60% fat) go here:

http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.c...lise-your.html

Poke around his site and you will think he is my main source -in fact, I never saw his blog until yesterday.

A low-fat or semi-starvation diet (1600 vs 2200 calories) can definitely lower your insulin levels and glucose levels as long as you are in calorie deficit, but not as effectively or safely as a high fat diet, IMO.

No question you can get closer to paleo insulin and glucose levels on 1600 cal/day than with the SAD. Can you do it in a variety of ways? You bet.

1) You can practice calorie restriction by stuffing yourself with mechanically satiating veggies and fiber, meticulously avoiding only the empty calories of sugar and white flour ala Fuhrman (the way I read it so far) Healthier than SAD? - for those with terrible diets loaded with sugar, yes.

2) You can decrease the frequency of meals to spend lots of time in ketosis with low serum glucose and insulin levels even though when you do eat the carb fraction is high. Intermittent fasting is very effective, but very, very difficult to do if you eat high carb and you and your mitochondria are not conditioned to ketosis. When I fast (easily up to 24 hours), I am not hungry, period. It takes no willpower and is not some kind of shamanistic mind-altering experience if you are a fat-burner. Fat is satiating at the meal, Ketone bodies in your circulation are satiating while fasting. Can you imagine paleo people feeling lightheaded and nauseated from hypoglycemic overshoot because they dadn't had a "snack' for a few hours - they have to find a cracker now - no time to hunt that herbivore they've been tracking without food for days!

3) You can consume nearly anything if you run like Dean Karnazes (the ultramarathoner) and because you are constantly sucking glucose into your muscles and burning it, eat almost anything. My patients aren't keen on running the western states 100 -they like to watch the packers on TV. Excessive aerobic exercise is bad for your your immunity - another topic altogether.

4) You can eat with normal, socially acceptable frequency in a calorie-rich western environment (e.g., 3 meals a day -I eat 2), by simply increasing intake of healthy fats (not just animal) and eliminating all grains and simple sugars from your diet.

without:

Hunger

Extraordinary amounts of exercise

Incurring the slightest risk of overt or subclinical gluten enteropathy

The excess O-6 fatty acids that suppress your cancer fighting immune system that are found in grains (0-6 to 0-3 ratios up to 22:1 versus 2:1 -you are what you eat) is hard on bovines and harder on humans. Why eat what you shouldn't feed a cow?

Grain lectins increasing your gut permeability and allowing foreign proteins into your blood

risking autoimmune diseases like MS, Crohn's disease, and rheumatoid arthritis

The allergies, including atopy, associated with grains

having excess gut flora and often irritable bowel syndrome

having indigestible fiber levels (proven to worsen IBS) more appropriate to a gorilla or cow

Risking serious nutritional deficiencies related to the phytates in grain that bind calcium or iron or zinc and are nonexistent if you depend on animal products. 1.2 Billion worldwide have iron deficiency anemia and it's not from lack of supplementation. Animal-based diets with no grains have no such risk

Thanks for conrtibuting and I'll post more on Fuhrman.

[Spartacus]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

the big problem with low carb diets is Atkins.

Everyone thought because of him you should be able to eat as much as you want, as long as you have low carbs you will lose weight.

It's a much, much more satisfying diet BUT lots of people have now been raised to eat large portions - habitually eating til you're gorged, NOT stopping at "no hunger"

You WILL gain weight on Atkins doing this.

The big problem with many other diets is, IMHO, wheat is a poison. Soy too, but less. Rice being the "best"

just because it doesn't kill you acutely doesn't mean it's not a poison.

There have been a bunch of very low fat diets proposed and used in the late 90s, 80s and late 70s. People don't stick to them. again IMHO, Pritikin caused a lot of heart attacks because of wheat's effects on small particle LDL.



There's still things we need to study bout low carb, though, because (last time i read about it, several years ago) very few people on the "permanent weight loss registry" are on low carb diets. I could be on the list but haven't bothered ...

what's interesting to me, at the moment, is looking for commonalities among the variety of proposed "healthy diets." fuhrman, like taubes [i gather, i've ordered his book but have yet to receive it, so i'm going on your references to him], advocates cutting out all refined grains and sugar, which is step #1 on your own recommended steps. otoh, fuhrman avoids the animal fats you recommend in step #2. he allows whole grains and fruit, which you proscribe, but if you read his actual work, what he recommends is a tremendous quantity of vegetables to be consumed before you add anything else. the idea is that you are so full of vegetables you don't have room for much else. this results in far more carb than fat, but overall not so much carb compared to a standard diet, i.e. this is a low cal diet. i saw a comparison of a fuhrman and eades [i think, i don't have the time right now to go back and find the link] diet: the fuhrman diet had a much higher proportion of carbs, but almost all from vegetables, and a total of only 1600 calories, whereas the locarb higher fat diet had 2200.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

the big problem with low carb diets is Atkins.

Everyone thought because of him you should be able to eat as much as you want, as long as you have low carbs you will lose weight.

There have been a bunch of very low fat diets proposed and used in the late 90s, 80s and late 70s. People don't stick to them. again IMHO, Pritikin caused a lot of heart attacks because of wheat's effects on small particle LDL.

Im my experience Atkins works better and is safer than Ornish or Pritikin or any low fat diet - with more loss of fat, less loss of muscle, better improvements in HDL and and triglycerides.

The problem with Atkins is that it is a diet, it has phases, counting, measuring, memorizing carb grams per serving, failure to distinguish between a cookie and two apples and worst of all, letting you "treat" yourself once a week with "rewards" that break the diet - kind of like a marlboro red once a week to reward you for quitting smoking. This creates compliance problems -you are training folks to think they are deprived.

Once you learn what grains are and what has sugar or HFCS or flour in it, my regime requires no counting at all.

The big problem with many other diets is, IMHO, wheat is a poison. Soy too, but less. Rice being the "best"

just because it doesn't kill you acutely doesn't mean it's not a poison.

Agree completely

There's still things we need to study bout low carb, though, because (last time i read about it, several years ago) very few people on the "permanent weight loss registry" are on low carb diets.

I could be on the list but haven't bothered ...

No sure I've ever seen that, but I've heard of it.

You just described one of the reasons no one is on it.

I suppose it's like the "I've finally quit smoking for good this time" registry, who wants to have your friends point it out to you when you've later fallen off the wagon?

Thanks for your comments

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition. Maybe the previous 50 generations were not entirely asleep at the wheel when they formulated the world's various food sustenances for their own survival.

These are Rogermexico's blind spots - Looking around the world, it should be observable that for plenty of these cultures, grain rich diets have historically evidenced (not in peer reviewed past 30 years sample groups) societies remarkably free of the celiac / diabetic / hyperglycemic ailments which he ascribes to the grains. This broad basket of societies, where common people were to all appearances hardy, while on diets including plenty of grains given the unaffordability of meat - seems curiously overlooked in the general enthusiasm for "bringing scientific method to bear" on why modern Americans are exploding into hyperglycemia in response to all the grain and sugar products we consume.

Faced with the many dietary traditions from around the world - and as there clearly are examples of grain rich diets which until recently have not evidenced any of the hyperglycemic consequences Roger links to this food, Roger seems to prefer an exclusionary theory, perhaps to make the thesis more elegantly validated, so an entire class of food which has been broadly consumed for centuries with a remarkably display of consensus across many dozens of societies around the world, only meets it's final definitive "adjudication" based upon an American nutritionist's study of the matter, over the space of a couple of years in the early 21st century.

Finding consensus for such a radical departure from the past consensus (that grains don't in fact destroy health) then seems more easily achieved by falling back on "peer reviewed papers", than by trying to peel that consensus out of the very contradictory and patchwork *living record* of what the world has actually eaten for the past 500 years. Because by and large, all of these grain consuming nations never did evidence a lot of sickly and weakened grain eaters spanning the past couple of centuries.

I still think Roger's first book should be a cookbook compiling wholesome foods of the world. That would provide a wonderful springboard for the second more theoretical foray into banishing all the grains.

In order to achieve a tightly wrapped thesis here, Paleo Nutrition seems to require some "nonconfirmatory instances" to be swept aside. That gets a little creaky to the thesis, as entire nations dietary histories, spanning centuries - **especally the rural poor populations who were less able to afford meat regularly** - paradoxically exhibited robust good health and freedom from industrialised world diseases, These don't appear to get much scrutiny in mitigation of the "grains are poison and kill people" thesis. They seem instead to get re-labeled "flawed sampling methodology" or "ambiguous conclusion", or just ignored, if it's a busy day at the office.

Meanwhile, that they actually in broad terms exhibited no rampant celiac disease, or diabetes, is a factum that just sort of sits on the table, looking awkward. In fact, many of these in their rural populations exhibit vanishingly small incidence of such diseases, by any modern metric, but their input is contradictory to the thesis and appears to get summarily dumped. The simple fact of their presence across hundreds of years of history leaves the Rogermexico's of this world stunningly unimpressed.

To suggest then that grains being good for you is a thesis still "in search of a validation", while the benefits of a Paleo Diet has been "fully demonstrated" by scientific parsing of it's modern day metabolic impact, takes the exasperation a step further. The Paleo Diet has not yet been tried on a societal scale across multiple ethnic groups, yet alone practiced for 100 or 500 years to provide a real-world data set. Meanwhile, here we are proceeding (appealing to the doctors among us), to discuss the merits of nutrition analysis "by scientific method", while expansively ignoring that there is flatly contradictory insight about whether grains are truly toxic across large sample groups and across significant timespans in the historical world record.

The past 200 years have included a lot of tumultuous events. According to Paleo Nutrition, all of these grain eating peoples have been tottering about in a state of chronic malnutrition and hyperglycemia all this while. IMO if systematically collecting existing diets and tracking their results was a primary focus of Price's work, then he shows more historically respectful caution and innate common sense sleuthing the bottom line here regarding toxic grains than does Rogermexico's Taubes, who arrives at the conclusion that entire swathes of world societies in their consecutive generational wisdom were simply *wrong* to include grains as a viable component of a balanced diet.

So here we have these wonderful "definitive test groups" scattered all over the world, whose rural populations exhibit enviably good health profiles along with grains consumption, - and this stunningly adverse fact to the thesis seems to blur collectively into these sort of large, pooled blind spots for the Paleo Nutrition theorist. When I see an American MD devising an elegantly exclusionary theory - particularly when it enlists the presumed dietary habits of men who walked 20,000 years ago, at the expense of the carefully logged dietary history of the past 500 years of perfectly healthy specimens - I conclude in my untutored supidity that I am contending with "American MD's cultural myopia syndrome" - wherein food stands or falls as a result of scientific deconstruction, before it ever has a viable pedigree as an existing cultural artifact .

At the core of this conceit, is the assumption that when studying really wisely balanced nutrition, one does not need to anchor one's theories on what peoples in the world manifestly do eat to exhibit superb health - when those case histories run flatly contrary to one's developing thesis.

For these self appointed (thriving cottage industry of) medically trained nutritional scholars, there is merely puzzlement, vexation or flat out disinterest, that these existing groups, and their diets provide the simplest and most reliable real world endorsement of what constitutes a balanced and healthy nutrition. In investing we all readily understand the principle of "don't tell the market what to do - ask it rather what it will do" - yet in nutrition, Roger does not wish to appreciate the value of "don't tell the world's populations what constitutes healthy nutrition - ask them rather what they have actually eaten, that has provided healthy populations for centuries.

Roger takes the opposite view - that the question of whether 1/5 or 1/3 of the earth's population has been munching on a toxin for five hundred years with the collective cultural and nutritional intelligence of an army of cows, has already "been clearly adjudicated by the (contemporary state of the art) "science" to the contrary. His view to this reader, seems a bit mired in a close up preoccupation with the illnesses which have sprung up due to America's industrially administered nutrition.

I think Roger's work might benefit from embracing the long history of healthy people evidenced in countries with a rich grain eating tradition (take a break from modern era "peer reviewed scientific case studies"). That means, shelve all of his assumptions long enough to conduct a really impartial investigation as to why those instances have not produced all of the Celiac / Diabetic illnesses he cites as "irrevocably linked" to this class of foods. In short, the world cookbook spanning 200 years and it's consequences, may be a wonderful and grounding preliminary project to be undertaken before the Paleo diet book.

Meanwhile, instead of a straight reckoning of whatever we can glean of the disease level in many grain-eating peoples worldwide in the past 200 years, we get conjectures that sound more like this :

"You can decrease the frequency of meals to spend lots of time in ketosis with low serum glucose and insulin levels even though when you do eat the carb fraction is high. Intermittent fasting is very effective, but very, very difficult to do if you eat high carb and you and your mitochondria are not conditioned to ketosis. When I fast (easily up to 24 hours), I am not hungry, period."

and

"A low-fat or semi-starvation diet (1600 vs 2200 calories) can definitely lower your insulin levels and glucose levels as long as you are in calorie deficit, but not as effectively or safely as a high fat diet, IMO. No question you can get closer to paleo insulin and glucose levels on 1600 cal/day than with the SAD. ..."

The fasting recommendation seems wise enough - but then fasting has been an integral part of Indian (and Buddhist) nutrition for what, a thousand years? That alone does not seem enough to write a macro-thesis changing book about nutrition today. And the very modest food-consumption Japanese would likely look at this enthusiasm a little blankly as well.

Why not instead, just pragmatically take some historical notes of the incidence of Celiac Disease and Diabetes across 200 years of grain eating, for a simpler validation? It appears to have been low to nonexistent, despite grains consumption. Oops. Meanwhile, Raja wrote: "Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there". I don't know how many takers you've got for this observation on these pages, as my impression is that we have many readers here thoroughly in thrall to the "American doctor reliably reveals wise nutrition to us" meme - but for my penny, your observation is the pithiest one on this thread.

Look at all of what people actually ate FOR 500 YEARS to get a more well averaged global verdict on the toxicity of grains - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" links so irrevocably with the grains. I know for a fact that many segments of the Meditteranean nations peasantry subsisted on far more grain and vegetable fats in the past 2-3 centuries than meat, for the simple reason that they were dirt poor and meat was never as cheap as these other foods. Maintain some appropriate skepticism about employing *any* definitive assertions as to *actual* food class ratios consumed by ancestors 20,000-50,000 years ago.

A cautious investigation would suggest first going in and explaining all of the non-confirmatory instances in the past 500 years - Rogermexico seems to approach it the other way around, vaulting over the heads of the past 500 years of apparently mostly healthy grain eating humans, to invoke only the present crop of urbanized OECD, increasingly sickly food consumers, and then as the antithesis, to enlist the imprecisely recalled Paleolithic diet.

These kinds of statements confirm my skepticism.

And more to the point, Price wasn't doing experimental research -- he was primarily documenting the health condition and dietary habits of some non-industrialized groups around the world -- so peer review isn't really needed.

You think that carbohydrates are not necessary because you cannot find any scientific evidence to that effect. But just remember that paleo people spent thousands of years eating starchy foods, and it is pure arrogance in my opinion for you to think you can ignore that evolutionary heritage.

Archeology cannot tell us much about plant foods, since they do not preserve as bones do. Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there. And medicine . . . well, what do they know about nutrition?

[Prazak]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition. Maybe the previous 50 generations were not entirely asleep at the wheel when they formulated the world's various food sustenances for their own survival.

These are Rogermexico's blind spots - Looking around the world, it should be observable that for plenty of these cultures, grain rich diets have historically evidenced (not in peer reviewed past 30 years sample groups) societies remarkably free of the celiac / diabetic / hyperglycemic ailments which he ascribes to the grains. This broad basket of societies, where common people were to all appearances hardy, while on diets including plenty of grains given the unaffordability of meat - seems curiously overlooked in the general enthusiasm for "bringing scientific method to bear" on why modern Americans are exploding into hyperglycemia in response to all the grain and sugar products we consume.

Faced with a slightly anarchic distribution of dietary clues from the world's patchwork of many cultures and tangled dietary suggestions, Roger seems to prefer a thesis bound up with "elegant completeness" where groups of food which have been broadly consumed by great consensus for centuries achieve their final "adjudication" based upon an American nutritionist's study of the matter. Finding consensus for such a radical departure from past tradition (grains kill health) then arguably becomes more easily achieved in "peer reviewed papers", than when trying to peel that consensus out of the long and very contradictory patchwork *living record* of what the world has actually eaten for the past 500 years without evidencing a lot of sickly and weakened grain eaters.

Meanwhile, we can only wonder if the many silent now departed food eaters in our world history, following their "untutored native intuition", managed to demonstrate any evolutionary progress in the balance of things they chose to eat. To overturn all their collective untutored wisdom about grains being OK, in the space of a couple of years of study of the matter, implies they were not making any evolutionary progress on their food choices for 500 years, else they might be well along by now, and not require enlightenment from the Paleo Nutrition discovery. I still think Roger's first book should be a cookbook compiling wholesome foods of the world. That would provide a wonderful springboard for the second more theoretical foray into banishing all the grains.

In order to achieve a completely concluded elegant thesis here then, Paleo Nutrition seems to require some "nonconfirmatory corrolaries" to be summarily jettisoned. This in effect means entire nations grain rich dietary habits spanning centuries - **especally the rural poor populations** in these countries, who by definition are less able to afford meat regularly, have paradoxically exhibited robust good health and freedom from our ubiquitous industrialised nation diseases with plenty of grains in their mix for centuries, gets re-labeled as "flawed sampling methodology" or "ambiguous conclusions" (or merely flatly ignored) and is one way or another, made to simply "go away". These nation's long dietary histories, including a liberal allotment of grains in their diets, exhibit no rampant celiac disease. No rampant diabetes.

In fact, many of these in their rural populations exhibit vanishingly small incidence of such diseases, by any modern metric, but their input is contradictory to the thesis and simply does not get included as "real elapsed empirical data". The simple fact of their presence across hundreds of years of history leaves the Rogermexico's of this world stunningly unimpressed.

To suggest then that their net health profiles "don't necessarily outstrip the Paleo Diet" is taking the exasperation a step further, as the Paleo Diet has not yet been rolled out a societal scale anywhere and practiced for 100 or 500 years to provide any current real-world data set. Meanwhile, we are here proceeding (most appealing to the doctors among us apparently), to discuss the merits of recent doctors turned nutritionists forays into the "study of nutrition", in confident obliviousness to the point that real insights into the health or toxicity of grain and carb based diets exist far more convincingly within their extant world populations, than in "peer reviewed papers" heavily involved in polemically parsing human biology.

IMO if this (systematically collecting existing diets and then tracking their health results in those populations historically) was a primary focus of Price's work, then he exhibits more common sense, historically respectful caution, and general agnosticism in the selection of his datasets than does Rogermexico's Taubes, who arrives at the conclusion that entire swathes of world societies in their consecutive generational wisdom were simply *wrong* to include grains as a viable component of a balanced diet.

Point being - here we have these wonderful "definitive test groups" scattered out there all over the world, whose rural populations exhibit enviably good health profiles along with their grains consumption, - and this stunningly simple fact seems to blur collectively into these sort of large, pooled blind spots for this plethora of MD-turned-nutritionist American commentators. Whenever I see an American MD devising elegantly exclusionary theories - particularly when they enlist the *presumed* dietary habits of men who walked 20,000 years ago, at the expense of the carefully logged dietary history of the past 500 years of perfectly healthy specimens - I conclude (in my untutored supidity) that I am contending with "American MD's cultural myopia syndrome" - wherein food is a science before it ever is a distilled and nutritionally wise existing cultural artifact .

At the core of this conceit, is the assumption that when studying really wisely balanced nutrition, one does not need to anchor one's theories on what peoples in the world manifestly do eat to exhibit superb health - when those case histories run flatly contrary to one's developing thesis.

For these self appointed (thriving cottage industry of) medically trained nutritional scholars, there is merely puzzlement, vexation or flat out disinterest, that these existing groups, and their diets provide the simplest and most reliable real world endorsement of what constitutes a balanced and healthy nutrition. In investing we all readily understand the principle of "don't tell the market what to do - ask it rather what it will do" - yet in nutrition, Roger does not wish to appreciate the value of "don't tell the world's populations what constitutes healthy nutrition - ask them rather what they have actually eaten, that has provided healthy populations for centuries.

Roger takes the opposite view - that the question of whether 1/5 or 1/3 of the earth's population has been munching on a toxin for five hundred years with the collective cultural and nutritional intelligence of an army of cows, has already "been clearly adjudicated by the (contemporary state of the art) "science" to the contrary. His view to this reader, seems a bit mired in a close up preoccupation with the illnesses which have sprung up due to America's industrially administered nutrition.

I would suggest, that Roger's work needs to grasp a firm hold of the long history of healthy people evidenced in countries rich in grain eating history (not short sampling period contemporary or modern era "peer reviewed case studies") and regroup all of his assumptions - shelving them thoroughly long enough to conduct a really impartial investigation into WHY grain rich diets the world over have produced many generations of peoples with none of the Celiac / Diabetic illnesses he cites as irrevocably linked" to this class of foods. In short, the world cookbook spanning 200 years and it's consequences, is a grounding task to be undertaken before the Paleo diet book.

Meanwhile, instead of a straight reckoning of whatever we can glean of the disease level in many grain-eating peoples worldwide in the past 200 years, we get conjectures that sound more like this :

"You can decrease the frequency of meals to spend lots of time in ketosis with low serum glucose and insulin levels even though when you do eat the carb fraction is high. Intermittent fasting is very effective, but very, very difficult to do if you eat high carb and you and your mitochondria are not conditioned to ketosis. When I fast (easily up to 24 hours), I am not hungry, period."

and

"A low-fat or semi-starvation diet (1600 vs 2200 calories) can definitely lower your insulin levels and glucose levels as long as you are in calorie deficit, but not as effectively or safely as a high fat diet, IMO. No question you can get closer to paleo insulin and glucose levels on 1600 cal/day than with the SAD. ..."

The fasting recommendation seems wise enough - but then fasting has been an integral part of Indian nutrition theory for what, a thousand years? That alone does not seem enough to write a macro-thesis changing book about nutrition today. And the very modest food-consumption Japanese would likely look at this enthusiasm a little blankly as well.

All sounds a bit culturally self absorbed to this reader - as an alternate and serviceable methodology, we could just sally forth pragmatically to collect the dietary habits of a dozen nations spanning 200 years, and then take a simple note of their incidence of Celiac Disease and Diabetes. It appears to have been in many of these countries peasantries low to nonexistent, despite grains consumption. Oops. You wrote: "Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there". I don't know how many takers you've got for this observation on these pages, as my impression is that we have many readers here thoroughly in thrall to the "American doctor reliably reveals wise nutrition to us" meme - but for my penny, your observation is the pithiest one on this entire thread.

Look to what people the world over actually HAVE eaten FOR 500 YEARS, to find the anchor point of any dietary thesis - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" associates with the grains - and take care to do that by combing the world's dietary traditions for *contradictory* themes, and across *real* spans of time rather than just the past 30 years (in peer reviewed studies), along with some hypothetical food consumption by hoary ancestors back 20,000-50,000 years ago. The robust, anchored methodology would choose to work back from the past 500 years evidence of healthful peoples consuming grains at will. Roger does it the other way around, leaping over the heads of the past 500 years of apparently perfectly healthy grain eating humans to enlist the Paleolithic instead.

Goodness gracious, Lukester, you're gonna bust a gasket.

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Trying to put Rogermexico and his hopped up, gas-pedal-to-the-floor eat-more-meat-fats and "grains = death" thesis to bed. It needs to take a meditative sabbatical - spend some quality time with the world's various "indigenous tribes" to peer more closely into the anomaly - that they have eaten grains, and humble pulses, from the humble lentil to the notionally toxically "glycemic" bean, along with their "glycemic" starches - all for hundreds of years - and on this sickly a diet of vegetable proteins and grain carbohydrates, managed to remain the labor backbones of their respective nations.

Too many iTulipers offering unqualified accolades to the soaringly ambitious (Pa-Nu wants to lop one third of the world's food staples off the menu), culturally parochial, "Paleo-Nutrition" theme - while it sits in a high chair pronouncing half the world's population "wrong" for having stupidly confounded a poison for food, for the past 500 years. Sally forth, and examine the armies of sickly, anemic and ailing grain-eating peasantry all over the world then. We remain absolutely stumped as to how they can perform all that hard work while decimated by celiac disease and runaway hyperglycemia.

In fact, they should more properly have been reduced (by our Pa-Nu theory) to tottering deathly-ill wraiths by now instead.

[flintlock]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Were Cavemen really that healthy that we want to copy their diet?

Actually, some of the best advice is to cut out the sugar. They put that crap in EVERYTHING now days.

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition.

Look at all of what people actually ate FOR 500 YEARS to get a more well averaged global verdict on the toxicity of grains - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" links so irrevocably with the grains. I know for a fact that many segments of the Meditteranean nations peasantry subsisted on far more grain and vegetable fats in the past 2-3 centuries than meat, for the simple reason that they were dirt poor and meat was never as cheap as these other foods. Maintain some appropriate skepticism about employing *any* definitive assertions as to *actual* food class ratios consumed by ancestors 20,000-50,000 years ago.

I'm in complete agreement, Lukester.

Unlike the science of basic chemistry, which is relatively simple, human nutrition is vastly complex. However, believing that they understand it, diet gurus promulgate hundreds of "diets" claiming their own version to be the healthiest.

I bypass all the nutritional complexities by eating a traditional diet, assuming that through trial and error over thousands of years, these cultures generally evolved a way of eating what works.

Roger says grains are toxic, yet, as you point out, people all over the world have eaten grains without suffering from diabetes and celiac disease. There is a disconnect there . . . .

[jimmygu3]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Were Cavemen really that healthy that we want to copy their diet?

Actually, some of the best advice is to cut out the sugar. They put that crap in EVERYTHING now days.

Yes, RM acknowledges that eliminating sugar has the biggest benefit.

Another thing I'll add is that you need to cut out artificial sweeteners too, even more so than sugar, IMO. Ideally eliminate both. Sweeteners keep your tongue and brain craving sugar because there's no sugar payoff in the stomach & bloodstream. They also desensitize your tongue to the natural sugars in vegetables and fruits, making them less appealing. I know ladies who put 6 Sweet-n-Lows in a cup of coffee because they are on a "diet".

Jimmy

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger says grains are toxic, yet, as you point out, people all over the world have eaten grains without suffering from diabetes and celiac disease. There is a disconnect there . . . .

The main disconnect is the issue of refined grains. The grains that most people in the world eat now and have eaten in the past are not refined. When they are refined, most micronutrients are removed in the process, to improve shelf life. In addition, the refined products cause spikes in insulin levels that are much higher than when they are unrefined. There is plenty of good research to show that high insulin levels are unhealthy.

However, saying that some population ate this-or-that food and didn't suffer ill effects is a pretty weak argument. Who knows what else they ate, what their genetics were like, how much exercise they were getting, what their overall nutritional status was, etc, etc. For example, the absence of certain micronutrients (such as zinc, selenium, molybdenum, etc), can cause a whole host of problems. Issues related to detoxification of the natural toxins in food is one of the first things to suffer.

In fact, I'm still not sure I understand the nature of your disagreement. Are you disagreeing with the ideas about insulin? That refined grains are unhealthy? Or is it the possibility that all grain might be unhealthy, and is therefore best avoided if you're trying to optimize your health?

BTW, the same is true for potatoes, which have also been eaten by humans for ages. Being in the nightshades family, they contain nicotine, as do their cousins tobacco, eggplant and capsicum. Does the fact that they've been eaten for ages mean that the toxin they contain doesn't have a negative effect in some populations?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Yes, RM acknowledges that eliminating sugar has the biggest benefit.

Another thing I'll add is that you need to cut out artificial sweeteners too, even more so than sugar, IMO. Ideally eliminate both. Sweeteners keep your tongue and brain craving sugar because there's no sugar payoff in the stomach & bloodstream. They also desensitize your tongue to the natural sugars in vegetables and fruits, making them less appealing. I know ladies who put 6 Sweet-n-Lows in a cup of coffee because they are on a "diet".

Jimmy

You may be aware of the observational study reported a few years ago - it reported that consumption of diet soda seems to independently correlate with the risk of metabolic syndrome (high blood sugar and insulin levels).

Now, there are a few ways this could occur;

1) Although they "control" for other factors like sugar consumption and calories, in any observational study, factoring out other variables is always mathematically supported guesswork. There may always be covariance with unknown risk factors that are inadequately accounted for or measured.

2) Artificial sweeteners, I believe, condition you to crave sweets. I have only personal and anecdotal clinical experience to support this, but it seems reasonable. I notice if during a long fast I drink diet soda, I get hungry about 15 minutes later every time.

3) There is some evidence there may be a physiologically significant insulin response with artificial sweeteners just due to the sweet taste- even if small, the corresponding drop in blood glucose may be exagerrated by the fact no glucose is consumed - when blood glucose drops, other hormones rise in response, stimulating your appetite. Of course insulin itself drives fat storage and decreases insulin sensitivity, so there may be direct unhealthy effects as well.

4) When it comes to artificial substances like aspartame, that we have even less experience consuming than the cereal grains I am leery of, the precautionary principle would dictate avoiding these substances.

As important as sucrose and HFCS avoidance? Probably not, but I don't recommend any artificial sweeteners.