PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[*T*]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

double post

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The pasta looks overcooked. American style. Steak looks ok. I couldn't run five yards after eating both of those however. Legs would get all saggy. I know Metalman is back when I start seeing lots of big technicolor pictures plastered up all over these pages.

stayed out of this until this one... bravo, aps1087!

i'm a runner and before i run i need fuel!



after... meat!

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The Japanese lifespan is the longest on the planet. Much longer healthy lives than USicans. Almost no obesity. They eat mostly fish, rice and veg. Almost no meat. Now they are adding meat to the diet they are getting taller, bigger, fatter and unhealthier.

Again, we are somewhat confounded by the term, "meat". Fish and eggs are animal products eaten by the japanese. If by meat, you mean beef, i don't doubt that as beef consumption increases, health indices decline. As I have pointed out elsewhere, you can't assess what you don't measure. Generally, absolute carbohydrate consumption and especially refined sugar consumption (including HFCS) increases even more than beef consumption or animal protein in general with increasing industrialization/wealth. That is, meat and sugar consumption are covariate, and as most of this research has not considered sugar the culprit they often don't look at that. Also, when total carb consumption is assessed in surveys, often they are not separated into unrefined/refined. Once again, well covered by Gary Taubes.

There is no doubt that although there is no nutritional requirement for carbs whatever (a simple metabolic fact people find hard to believe) some carbs are definitiely more potent than others. Sucrose/HFCS are definitely worse in term of insulin effect than other carbs sources, which is why I say you are more than half way there if you just totally eliminate all sugar and HFCS. As Americans eat about 160 lbs a year of refined sugar, if you tell them to just avoid it, I find it is clinically impossible for most regular people to do that unless yo give them something that subsitutes for it. That is why healthy fat substitution is step 2.

Observational studies are tricky because of the unknown variables as we have discussed earlier on he thread - but there are a couple of observations about Japan that counter the "Eat rice not meat" spin.

1) I believe the longest lived japanese are the Okinawans - who eat the most animal products of any japanese.

2) When the Japanese were "healthier", they ate more rice as a percentage of calories but possibly not so much more on an absolute level, that is their total calories were lower. Calorie restriction and extremely hard physical work can both keep your insulin levels low despite high carb consumption, but are not the healthiest or most comfortable ways to do it, IMO.

More importantly, their refined sugar consumption was just about zero.

3) When the japanese were healthier in terms of diseases we all worry about and study, they had periods of not so desirable diseases absolutely related to their high rice consumption. The advent of polished rice (which is what you get with your sushi) with mechanization probably increased availability, but polished rice has had important vitamins removed with the bran, and there were epidemics of BeriBeri (paralysis) until thaimin supplemention. White rice s probably not as bad as wheat for antinutrients, but its still a grain. Why eat something as a staple that has to be fortified?

I have seen Japanese come to the UK or US and *explode* in size due to the change in diet.

No doubt. North americans regardless of genetic origin tend eat a lot of sugar

Japanese food is reasonably portioned. And the key point is: they don't eat crap.

Yes, sugar is crap

I should also point out that the same foods are different in different places. Rice in the US is different from rice in the Punjab from rice in Japan.

Milk is a particularly notable example. The cow's milk in the UK is not that great. I drink goat's milk here. In the states it's undrinkable and actually makes me feel ill. In Norway the cow's milk actually tastes good and feels like it's doing you good. The rancidity level is lower. No doubt you can get good food in the states but in my observation by and large people don't.

Milk of any kind is not really paleolithic - there may be immune problems related to casein. That said, I don't think dairy is as bad as grains.

Then there is the factor of eating food suitable to your environment. Cold countries require more meat. The North Italian winter diet is different from the North Italian summer diet for example. So to characterise it as 'pasta' is to caricature and misunderstand.

I am not sure they require more meat, but certainly in environments with long winters and short growing seasons, large animals are an adaptive food source (scandinavia)

Here is Taubes commenting on asia from Eades' website:

"The Asian question first. I do address this in the book and I address it again in the afterward of the paperback. There are several variables we have to consider with any diet/health interaction. Not just the fat content and carb content, but the refinement of the carbs, the fructose content (in HFCS and sucrose primarily) and how long they’ve had to adapt to the refined carbs and sugars in the diet. In the case of Japan, for instance, the bulk of the population consumed brown rice rather than white until only recently, say the last 50 years. White rice is labor intensive and if you’re poor, you’re eating the unrefined rice, at least until machine refining became widely available. The more important issue, though, is the fructose. China, Japan, Korea, until very recently consumed exceedingly little sugar (sucrose). In the 1960s, when Keys was doing the Seven Countries Study and blaming the absence of heart disease in the Japanese on low-fat diets, their sugar consumption, on average, was around 40 pounds a year, or what the Americans and British were eating a century earlier. In the China Study, which is often evoked as refutation of the carb/insulin hypothesis, the Chinese ate virtually no sugar. In fact, sugar consumption wasn’t even measured in the study because it was so low. The full report of the study runs to 800 pages and there are only a couple of mentions of sugar. If I remember correctly (I don’t have my files with me at the moment) it was a few pounds per year. The point is that when researchers look at traditional populations eating their traditional diets — whether in rural China, Japan, the Kitava study in the South Pacific, Africa, etc — and find relatively low levels of heart disease, obesity and diabetes compared to urban/westernized societies, they’re inevitably looking at populations that eat relatively little or no refined carbs and sugar compared to populations that eat a lot. Some of these traditional populations ate high-fat diets (the Inuit, plains Indians, pastoralists like the Masai, the Tokelauans); some ate relatively low-fat diets (agriculturalists like the Hunza, the Japanese, etc.), but the common denominator was the relative absence of sugar and/or refined carbs. So the simplest possible hypothesis to explain the health of these populations is that they don’t eat these particularly poor quality carbohydrates, not that they did or did not eat high fat diets."

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

It seems to me you have made two reversals concerning the paleo diet.
You now admit that: 1) Grains were used, at least to some degree, and 2) carbohydrate-rich diets were consumed by some cultures.

In a prior post, you said,

We are also not adapted to eating grass seeds, to which we have been exposed for only about 10,000 years.

That is not entirely true, as you said in your last post. "Clearly, at some point in or around mesopotamia, there was a technological transition to cultivated grain." In other words, humans were grain-eaters prior to 10,000 years ago. This is not a minor point, since a long history of grain eating by humans has allowed them to adapt to this food.

You qualify your statement by claiming that grain eating was "at most an incidental or small part of the diet" and not "predominant". I know of no evidence to support that statement. In fact, grain grows almost everywhere, and it can be gathered and stored for future use. Why would paleo people not exploit this food source, then exploit it further by the development of agriculture?

I agree with you that grains did not exist in the diet in the same quantities that they do today. However, I pointed out that, "carbohydrate-rich tubers were a large part of the pre-agriculture diet." Granted, grains are not tubers, but grains were able to take the place of these foraged carbohydrate sources because they are nutritionally similar in macronutrients." You responded, "Were there times and places of high carb consumption in addition to low like the Masai, the Inuit and The Plains tribes in north america? - With tubers I am sure there were, but I have not seen evidence of predominant grain- eating before agriculture. I believe the tribes with higher carb intake had levels of energy expenditure and enough food scarcity to keep insulin levels lower than if modern humans in cities ate the same way."
You are now admitting that high-carbohydrate intake did exist in human history. You qualify this by saying it was not harmful because of high energy expenditure and food scarcity.

There were times of food scarcity, but probably less so for the carbohydrate-rich foods. Starchy tubers are available most of the year protected in the ground, while animal prey and fresh green vegetables may have been much harder or impossible to obtain in the winter season.
Second, there is no question that pre-industrial societies got more exercise than modern people. But if we are adapted to a diet with ample carbohydrates, surely the answer for modern people is to continue that type of macronutrient-proportioned diet, and just eat less and get more exercise.

. . . we are trying to duplicate paleo metabolic conditions. Low carbs, fewer meals, intermittent fasting all keep insulin levels low.

Is this really the paleo diet?

Pre-industrial people were hunters and gatherers. They sought out food wherever they could find it. Judging from remote tribes living today, the men spent their time hunting, while the women foraged with their children and babies strapped to their backs . . . gathering nuts, grains, tubers, vegetables and berries.
Use of fire for cooking has been around for 125,000 years by some estimates, and we can assume that many of the foods collected were cooked. Cooking is beneficial . . . why else would cooking have evolved if there were not some evolutionary advantage? Why go to the trouble of gathering wood and preserving fire if people could just eat all their food raw? (The scientific answer is the enhancement of nutrient availability and destruction of anti-nutrients resulting from cooking.)

The fact is that we don't know how much of the paleo diet consisted of starchy carbohydrates (grains and tubers), and we will probably never know. So duplicating the paleo diet is impossible with any degree of certainty. The best evidence of what might have been is the research of Dr. West A. Price, who studied the health and diets of non-industrialized people in many remote locations around the world back in the 1920s and 30s. Of the groups he studied, some were eating more animal foods (e.g., Masai), while others were eating more vegetal foods. He found that those peoples eating in the middle of this animal-vegetal spectrum spectrum were the healthiest, and they all ate some form of starchy carbohydrate.

Nutrition is such a complex subject and scientific analysis can result in very bad advice (e.g., doctors' margarine recommendations). I put my faith in epidemiological studies that examine the health and diets of large groups of people from the macro perspective. I also pay attention to my body's intuitive wisdom -- from among natural foods, I let my instinct guide my selection and proportions. I often run across people on extreme diets who suffer from extreme cravings . . . like those on a high-meat diet who dream of eating a loaf of fresh-cooked bread which their theory prevents them from otherwise enjoying.

No grains, in addition to reducing the probabilty of coeliac disease and immune dysfunction because of our incomplete adaptation, eliminates the majority of the excess carbohydrates to the point where I can say, "eat all the nuts and other vegetables you want". Do you see the advantage here for efficacy?

Is celiac disease caused by grains, or does it result when unhealthy people eat grains?
It is well known that resistance to disease is partly determined by the health of the immune system. Wouldn't this also be true, at least to some degree, when it comes to allergic responses?
How many people with celiac disease have ruined their intestinal health by a diet containing sugar and refined flours, and are now unable to eat grains? Do these people need to avoid grains, or would it be better for them to get their intestinal health back in shape. I think that temporary cessation of grains is helpful, but that may not be the ultimate solution in most cases. Of course, this is just speculation on my part, since no long-term research has been done on healthy diets because the myopic medical profession cannot see the forest for the trees and doesn't even know what a healthy diet is :eek:. However, we do have this: "Celiac disease is the most common genetic disease in Europe. In Italy about 1 in 250 people and in Ireland about 1 in 300 people have celiac disease. It is rarely diagnosed in African, Chinese, and Japanese people." Why do the Africans, Chinese and Japanese people rarely have celiac disease? Is it because their diets are more traditional resulting in better health? Or is it that rice is a better grain than wheat in some respects?

If I am wrong it is at least completely harmless - I have yet to encounter a single benefit to eating wheat that I cannot get from eating asparagus, green beans, broccoli, wild mushrooms, romaine lettuce, etc. I think it is fair to ask grains advocates -what do they offer in compensation for the risk of coeliac disease, that we can't get elsewhere? Just because we needed them to form cities, are we bound to keep at it as a 10,000 year old tradition?

There are no long-term studies done on what you call the paleo diet. How can you flatly state that it is completely harmless?
What you can't get from vegetables that you can get from grains is adequate carbohydrates. In order to duplicate the actual paleo diet, you probably need 50% carbohydrate in your diet (admitted speculation), and the only way to do that is with starchy tubers and/or grains.

Clinically, I have had success in treating allergic rhinitis, asthma, irritable bowel syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis eczema, and Type II diabetes. Many of these subjects reported rapid improvement in these disorders that they were surprised by, as they were only trying to lose weight

Roger, I don't doubt that removing refined sugar and carbohydrates from anyone's diet will result in improved health. But that doesn't prove that your recommended diet as a whole is sound, or healthy in the long term.

I am as critical of science as a privileged sphere of inquiry as you are. Although we disagree, I hope you would grant that my views are certainly not mainstream and are even quite at odds with a variety of government and professional medical organizations. I agree with your point that we much use all levels of inquiry in addition to our reason to make sense of the world.

We actually agree on many things:

Eliminate refined sugars and grains
Use healthy fats (animal and mono-saturated)
Get daily sunlight
Eat grass-fed meat (I grow my own )
Adequate exercise

Where we disagree:

What is the true paleo diet
Are grains healthy or harmful

I would also add some things to your Dietary To Do list:

Avoid industrially grown and processed foods -- agricultural corporations don't care about your health, only their bottom line
Soak grains overnight before use to remove mineral-binding phytins
Eat the whole animal, not just the muscle meat -- consume organ meats and bone broths. (It's just a psychological aversion, get over it)
Eat food from one's climate zone
Eat food according to its season, using traditional techniques such as drying to preserve foods out of season
Eat whole foods
Use unrefined salt
Don't use vitamin and mineral supplements except as short-term medicines
Use high-vitamin cod liver oil if you can't get enough sun
Strive for disease prevention and treatment through lifestyle modification. Use convention or alternative medicine as a last resort (or the former if in need of trauma care). If you require a doctor, you've made a mistake in how you eat or live. Figure out what it is and correct it.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Grains and other starch rich foods do provide something that vegetables do not...ENERGY. For those of us that are big into high intensity exercise, how do you suggest that we fuel for our activity?

Hello aps

Not a lot of energy in vegetables alone, that is why animal products with fat and protein should generally should be the core of your diet. Despite current nutritional dogma, and the belief in carbo-loading since the 70's, carbohydrate consumption is completely unnecessary for your energy (or any other) needs. Fat is the way we store energy in our own bodies, and eating fat is the evolutionarily preferred food source in a food-abundant environment.* During aerobic exercise, the predominant fuel source is fatty acids, supplemented by glycogen stores.

It is 100% possible to never eat any carbohydrate whatsoever and still do lots of physical work. Any carbs needed not provided from glycogen or food can be produced in abundance via gluconeogenesis. Glucose provided this way makes you literally burn fat, and keeps your insulin levels low.

Yo have about about an hour or more of exercise in your liver and muscle glycogen.

If you are a lean runner, you have enough energy in your body fat to walk about 800 miles.

You simply don't need carbs to exercise.

Try this:

Once you are adapted to low carb intake (it may take 6 weeks or more, so go slowly) your mitochondria, including in your muscles and your brain, will literally proliferate and be more energy efficient. Gradually start doing your workouts with less and less carb consumption prior to exercise, to the point where you are solely working out in the fasting state. By fasting state I mean no food for at least 12 hours. Now, most people think I am a lunatic when I suggest this, but hear me out.

I have talked about intermittent fasting as a complement to low carb eating to keep your insulin levels low. One reason they are complementary is once you are off the glucose/insulin hormonal yo yo, your ability to tolerate fasting is increased immeasurably. On a very low carb diet you are literally never hungry, in that desperate way you are when you are carb-dependent. Intermittent fasting is absolutely the best way to keep your insulin levels as low as possible (more on why that is good in the future)

Working up to fasting workouts slowly, you will find that your performance (running time, max lifting) eventually equals or exceeds what you could do before with a meal 2 hours before, as your body becomes more adapted to fatty acid metabolism and less dependent on glucose .

I have proved this through self-experimentation, and then found plenty of published literature that supports it. My business partner who is the marathon kayaker and the real athlete trains this way and he is spreading it to fellow athletes. You can google and find info on it now as well.

Now here is the cool part. When you race, you have new mitochondria and your newly efficient fat-preferring metabolism. Add a moderate carb load and some GU bars if its a long race, and you will be faster than you were before. Glucose is now your nitrous oxide, not your primary fuel.

When you want to climb K2, train in Leadville, Colorado, not Santa Monica.

*When food was abundant in paleo times, it was because there were large mammals rich in fat stores. Humans ate the fat, and it was adaptive for them to be satiated because food was abundant. No insulin response to make them store the fat, just use it for fuel and waste the rest. Conversely, when fruits were most abundant at the end of growing season, winter was approaching, and it may have been adaptive to store fat for the coming winter. That is why fructose has a strong insulin response and in fact, is sent straight to the liver to be converted into triglycerides. Eating lots of sugar year round is not something we were adapted to

Diet is not the only way to manipulate insulin sensitivity...exercise is the other biggie, and I would argue the more important of the 2 (diet/exercise) when it comes to increasing insulin sensitivity.

I used to think so too, but now I believe strongly it is the reverse. Insulin sensitivity is improved by exercise for sure, but not nearly as powerfully as with diet. With exercise, you are driving glucose directly into skeletal muscles, functionally "bypassing" the insulin-regulated glucose pump. As the same glucose load can now be handled with less insulin, you secrete less insulin, and as your cells see less insulin, they up-regulate their sensitivity.

This is occurring while you exercise, but not so much the rest of the time you are carb-loading or just eating the typical diet of 40-60 % carbs. Get carbs down to 20% or so, and the round-the-clock stabilization of low insulin levels will do much more to decrease the amount of insulin those cell receptors see, and they will be made much more sensitive than with just exercise.

I think the more important take home message is to eat for your activity. If you are very sedentary, carbs are not nearly as necessary as if you are big into resistance training or sprinting or other high intensity sports. Trying to get in the necessary fuel with a fat/protein/veggie diet is next to impossible.

Fats and proteins and whatever carbs come with your vegetables is all you need, whatever your activity.

Right now, I am going for a 4.5 mile run, followed by 45 minutes cross-fit workout. I had cup of decaf this morning but have eaten no food since 8 pm yesterday.

Thanks for your comments.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Get daily sunlight

Dr. Mercola has some interesting new advice on sunlight, at Shocking Update -- Sunshine Can Actually Decrease Your Vitamin D Levels.

• Showers (with soap) interfere with Vitamin D production, because it takes a while for the oil soluble Vitamin D produced on the skin to be absorbed, and showers can wash it off first.
• Sunlight through glass windows (which has more UVA than UVB) actually lowers ones Vitamin D levels.
• Statins and other cholesterol lowering drugs lower ones Vitamin D levels, because cholesterol is a precursor for Vitamin D.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Dr. Mercola has some interesting new advice on sunlight, at Shocking Update -- Sunshine Can Actually Decrease Your Vitamin D Levels.

• Showers (with soap) interfere with Vitamin D production, because it takes a while for the oil soluble Vitamin D produced on the skin to be absorbed, and showers can wash it off first.
• Sunlight through glass windows (which has more UVA than UVB) actually lowers ones Vitamin D levels.
• Statins and other cholesterol lowering drugs lower ones Vitamin D levels, because cholesterol is a precursor for Vitamin D.

Yep it has to be UV B - Skip the suncreen

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The point is that when researchers look at traditional populations eating their traditional diets — whether in rural China, Japan, the Kitava study in the South Pacific, Africa, etc — and find relatively low levels of heart disease, obesity and diabetes compared to urban/westernized societies, they’re inevitably looking at populations that eat relatively little or no refined carbs and sugar compared to populations that eat a lot. Some of these traditional populations ate high-fat diets (the Inuit, plains Indians, pastoralists like the Masai, the Tokelauans); some ate relatively low-fat diets (agriculturalists like the Hunza, the Japanese, etc.), but the common denominator was the relative absence of sugar and/or refined carbs. So the simplest possible hypothesis to explain the health of these populations is that they don’t eat these particularly poor quality carbohydrates, not that they did or did not eat high fat diets."

Thanks for posting this.

I have long believed that sugar and refined carbohydrates were the causes of heart disease -- not cholesterol. It's nice to see some epidemiological confirmation.

Also interesting is that the big grain-eaters were in the same good-health category as the no-grain eaters. Roger, here's more evidence that your accusations against grains are incorrect.

You put people on your high-meat diet and they feel better . . . but you're also taking them off sugar and refined carbs. In my opinion, your version of the paleo diet is a "medicine" for sick people . . . not a diet for life.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for posting this.

I have long believed that sugar and refined carbohydrates were the causes of heart disease -- not cholesterol. It's nice to see some epidemiological confirmation.

Also interesting is that the big grain-eaters were in the same good-health category as the no-grain eaters. Roger, here's more evidence that your accusations against grains are incorrect.

You put people on your high-meat diet and they feel better . . . but you're also taking them off sugar and refined carbs. In my opinion, your version of the paleo diet is a "medicine" for sick people . . . not a diet for life.

You really should read Taubes book - this is the carbohydrate hypothesis itself - that carbs are responsible via insulin for heart disease, not fats or cholesterol. I think you would like it.

Of course they feel better off refined sugars. Where have I said that the effect is due to increased meat? Raja, I live in wisconsin where the lowest quartile of meat consumption would probably horrify you. They already eat a lot of meat, in the sense of "large animal flesh". I am trying to get them to have an egg and cup of coffee with cream in it instead of orange juice, toast and bagel and cereal with skim milk.

Here is where we are hung up, I think.

You have to eat something. If you were eating 160 lbs per year of sugar, you must now eat something else. I am not telling them to eat less sugar so they can eat more meat. I am saying they can eat more of anything as long as its not refined sugar, and if they want to go a step further, grains.

They can increase their butter, cream, fish, asparagus, whatever they want. I am not trying to coerce meat consumption, I just allow it.

I understand that you would prefer they eliminate sugar, and I guess eat lots of whole wheat and other cereal grains instead. But why grains? Why not tubers and vegetables.

Metabolically there is no need whatever for any carbohydrates in the diet. If that is the case, why would I recommend grains if they offer nothing I can't get more of from vegetables and animal products.

Raja, if you have religious or philosophical objections to meat I think that is reasonable and defensible. I can't argue with those. However, there is absolutely no good evidence that animal products in general are bad for your health. As you point out , much of the slander is due to unfounded fear of cholesterol, the rest due to unfounded fear of saturated fat, and the rest due to poorly controlled observational studies looking at "meat" (often included processed meat) consumption that is confounded by sugar consumption, ad sometimes even things like smoking.

No prospective intervention (nurses health, etc) has shown any negative effects to meat, protein, "red meat" or saturated fat.

My 12 steps or points do not say eat more meat as steaks and don't say eat more anything except what i regard as healthy fats. If high meat diet means any diet allowing animal flesh, then it is "high meat", otherwise, it is no higher than before. It is certainly not vegan.

It encourages animal products, and allows red meat if grass fed

It eliminates sugars, HFCS and highly refined flour

It encourages you to eliminate grains and the risks of their gluten and antinutrients. (gluten is not inactivated by cooking as I am sure you know, and I''ll talk about lectins and such in a future post) One third of the population has antibodies to gliadin. Overt celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg. Wheat is just a 10,00 year old tradition.

I will ask once again, what can I or my patients get from wheat that we can't get better from fish (if you prefer) and non-cereal vegetables? Another way to put it, what deficiency can ensue based on my recommendations? What are my patients missing without wheat?

It's mainly about low insulin levels, but secondarily about avoiding grains, because they provide nothing special, are dangerous and we don't need them.

The "not diet for life" thing is hard to understand. Is there something you are not telling me? Are you a vegan? Fine if you are. Just curious. I don't mean to offend you but you seem to be seeing "meat promotion" everywhere.

[c1ue]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

Interesting points.

I do think that while chimpanzees and humans are not the same - nonetheless comparing modern human structure with chimpanzee structure is a little problematic.

For example - what is the Neanderthal vs. modern man gut ratio? What about blue whales? I suspect size matters.

Secondly the assumption that humans without guns could easily hunt large mammals - I don't agree with that at all.

While an atlatl/spear is fine for whitetail deer or the equivalent, taking down mammoths or rhinos or similar animals with such equipment is really close to suicide. Even a decent sized elk or moose is damned hard to kill outside of modern compound bows.

For that matter, in the era of large mammals roaming the land there were also large predators. I'd not envy anyone trying to hold off large predatory cats with a spear.

As for Japan - from my having lived there, the Japanese just don't eat much. In general they practice a societal caloric restriction.

When my ex-boss came to SF and we went out to dinner, his meal consisted of 4 pieces of sushi and a lot of sake. This is a little extreme, but at home the Japanese simply don't eat much.

I don't think they are in the starvation category of the 10% malnutrition crowd, but I do think that simply not eating too much helps.

Another data point is age.

I've noticed with seniors in my new business that they simply don't have the appetite of younger people. In fact, many seniors if they don't have food available right away will simply lose appetite and skip a meal.

Certainly those who make it to 75 and up aren't the obese ones, but I wonder how this fits with your refined sugar thesis.

As for gout and sugar, it is possible. I do know that refined sugar in the Middle Ages occupied the niche that cocaine does today. It may well have been that conspicuous consumption by the nobility/wealthy in that period consisted of not just meat and wine, but also refined sugar in the form of sweets hence the prevalence of gout.

[Nicolasd]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger, I am not sure if this has been covered elsewhere on this thread as it is rather lengthy so sorry for any duplication

Francois Montignac (a French pharmacoligist) came-up with a similar therory in the 90's altough no link was made to the paleolithic ages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montignac_diet

It refers to glycemic index and controlling insulin peaks .
It also refers to the mediterranean diet -(something Lukester embraces)
His book is probably available in english by now.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Secondly the assumption that humans without guns could easily hunt large mammals - I don't agree with that at all.

While an atlatl/spear is fine for whitetail deer or the equivalent, taking down mammoths or rhinos or similar animals with such equipment is really close to suicide. Even a decent sized elk or moose is damned hard to kill outside of modern compound bows.

I've read articles describing how native American Indians killed large quantities of buffalo by heading them off cliffs. So perhaps with enough savy, primitive man could hunt large animals successfully, even without guns or compound bows.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

It seems to me you have made two reversals concerning the paleo diet.
You now admit that: 1) Grains were used, at least to some degree, and 2) carbohydrate-rich diets were consumed by some cultures.

If it makes you feel better to see a reversal that is fine, but I think you are splitting hairs -humans ate everything edible - that is what omnivore means- but that is in no way inconsistent with saying we are incompletely adapted to predominant grain consumption . If I am on the road and all I can find to eat is a bran muffin, have I just trashed my whole thesis?

At the outset I explicltly said my paleo diet did not attempt to duplicate what paleo people ate, but what metabolic conditions they evolved under. Chief among these was (I believe) a fat burning metabolism with low insulin levels. I also stated pretty clearly that fasting, infrequent meals, and low carb consumption were all ways to achieve that.I specifically mentioned those because those conditions characterize the period before agriculture. I never stated that there were no societies with high carb consumption via tubers, so how is that a reversal? I stated that I endorsed low carbs as a percentage of calories as the most practical way to keep insulin levels low in regime of high caloric abundance.

I don't try to duplicate what paleo people ate, with the important exception of discouraging grain consumption. For all practical purposes, they did not eat grains. there is wealth of evidence they are not as healthy as vegetables. If so, why eat them? What benefit do they provide?

In a prior post, you said,
That is not entirely true, as you said in your last post. "Clearly, at some point in or around mesopotamia, there was a technological transition to cultivated grain." In other words, humans were grain-eaters prior to 10,000 years ago. This is not a minor point, since a long history of grain eating by humans has allowed them to adapt to this food.

You qualify your statement by claiming that grain eating was "at most an incidental or small part of the diet" and not "predominant". I know of no evidence to support that statement.

Plenty of evidence. Loren Cordain's work especially.

In fact, grain grows almost everywhere, and it can be gathered and stored for future use. Why would paleo people not exploit this food source, then exploit it further by the development of agriculture?

That is the point, they didn't exploit it until agriculture 10,000 years ago.

"Celiac disease is the most common genetic disease in Europe. In Italy about 1 in 250 people and in Ireland about 1 in 300 people have celiac disease. It is rarely diagnosed in African, Chinese, and Japanese people." Why do the Africans, Chinese and Japanese people rarely have celiac disease? Is it because their diets are more traditional resulting in better health? Or is it that rice is a better grain than wheat in some respects?

Celiac disease is just the tip of the iceberg. White rice is indeed less harmful than wheat flour, you don't make pie crusts with it (less gluten) That explains the ethnic difference. Why advocate wheat?

What you can't get from vegetables that you can get from grains is adequate carbohydrates. In order to duplicate the actual paleo diet, you probably need 50% carbohydrate in your diet (admitted speculation), and the only way to do that is with starchy tubers and/or grains.

I am duplicating paleo metabolism not the diet.

The human metabolic requirement for dietary carbohydrates is exactly zero.

None. You don't need them, period. Glucose can be produced as an internal fuel in the body in perfectly adequate amount for human health with zero oral carbohydrate intake.

There are essential fatty acids and amino acids, but absolutely no essential carbohydrates.

Roger, I don't doubt that removing refined sugar and carbohydrates from anyone's diet will result in improved health.

We actually agree on many things:

Eliminate refined sugars and grains
Use healthy fats (animal and mono-saturated)
Get daily sunlight
Eat grass-fed meat (I grow my own )
Adequate exercise

Where we disagree:

What is the true paleo diet
Are grains healthy or harmful

I would also add some things to your Dietary To Do list:

Avoid industrially grown and processed foods -- agricultural corporations don't care about your health, only their bottom line
Soak grains overnight before use to remove mineral-binding phytins
Eat the whole animal, not just the muscle meat -- consume organ meats and bone broths. (It's just a psychological aversion, get over it)
Eat food from one's climate zone
Eat food according to its season, using traditional techniques such as drying to preserve foods out of season
Eat whole foods
Use unrefined salt
Don't use vitamin and mineral supplements except as short-term medicines
Use high-vitamin cod liver oil if you can't get enough sun
Strive for disease prevention and treatment through lifestyle modification. Use convention or alternative medicine as a last resort (or the former if in need of trauma care). If you require a doctor, you've made a mistake in how you eat or live. Figure out what it is and correct it.

For all our disagreement, which is probably borne more of passion and interest than anything else, let me state that if my patients were to follow your list the way you have stated it, they would still be much healthier than otherwise.

Thank you for your interest and your responses.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I've read articles describing how native American Indians killed large quantities of buffalo by heading them off cliffs. So perhaps with enough savy, primitive man could hunt large animals successfully, even without guns or compound bows.

Hunting of megafauna as a food source is very well documented.

As bowhunter, I hunt with a 53 lb longbow (primitive stick and string) with broadhead arrows no more effective than flint points. It will shoot completely through a whitetail.

Elk, moose and even bison can be easily killed with the this kind of tackle which is no more effective than what native americans used.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger, I am not sure if this has been covered elsewhere on this thread as it is rather lengthy so sorry for any duplication

Francois Montignac (a French pharmacoligist) came-up with a similar therory in the 90's altough no link was made to the paleolithic ages

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montignac_diet

It refers to glycemic index and controlling insulin peaks .
It also refers to the mediterranean diet -(something Lukester embraces)
His book is probably available in english by now.

Thanks I'll check it out