Eating whole, unprocessed, natural foods is great, but the science behind the paleo diet being “the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup” - I mean if that literally doesn't sound like dogma, I don't know what does.
There is no "one and only" stone age diet - you ate what was around you! The Inuit aren't eating oranges and spinach, that stuff doesn't grow in the tundra. Similarly, you won't be eating deer and bison in Greece, but you will be eating fish and olives.
There are societies across many geographic regions with long life expectancies, and their diets vary wildly.
The Grecians eat lots of fruits, veggies, olive oil, fish, goat milk and wine. The Japanese eat soybeans, sweet potatoes, white rice, seaweed, and fish. Sardinians eat lots of game, goat cheese/milk, beans, and barley. Each is home to peoples with the longest life expectancy on earth today, and each has at least one staple that is not considered paleo friendly.
Alan Aragon did a great talk critiquing the paleo diet, which you can read more about here[1].
> Eating whole, unprocessed, natural foods is great, but the science behind the paleo diet being “the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup” - I mean if that literally doesn't sound like dogma, I don't know what does.
The paleo straw manning needs to stop. Most people I know that use paleo as a standard to live by don't think it's the be all, end all. That if you eat anything you couldn't get 60,000+ years it's automatically bad, that isn't how people that actually follow paleo go about it.
> There is no "one and only" stone age diet - you ate what was around you! The Inuit aren't eating oranges and spinach, that stuff doesn't grow in the tundra. Similarly, you won't be eating deer and bison in Greece, but you will be eating fish and olives.
The fact that you put this out as an argument against further proves what im saying, I really don't see how this applies to anyone but the hardcore strict paleo which doens't really exist outside of the ones who write and sell books.
> There are societies across many geographic regions with long life expectancies, and their diets vary wildly.
Yes, these kind of conversations are the ones I find myself having with paleo-minded people more often. About trying to work out what food our bodies work better with, I really am stumped as to why you are seeing this is a knock on paleo.
> The Grecians eat lots of fruits, veggies, olive oil, fish, goat milk and wine. The Japanese eat soybeans, sweet potatoes, white rice, seaweed, and fish. Sardinians eat lots of game, goat cheese/milk, beans, and barley. Each is home to peoples with the longest life expectancy on earth today, and each has at least one staple that is not considered paleo friendly.
If you read the book outliers you would also know that food isn't the only contributing factor to life expectancy by a long shot. The example in the book about the greek town who by any dietary standards was eating incredibly faty and unhealthy foods had extraordinary high life expectancy, believed to be due to their extremely high happiness due to their tight-knit social structure.
> Alan Aragon did a great talk critiquing the paleo diet, which you can read more about here
I don't see why I should even bother when you start off your comment talking about the dogma needs to stop and you throw out a bunch of half assed arguments which don't address paleo directly.
The point being that humans are generalists: diet, activity, everything. There is no one perfect diet that works for everyone. The mess of evolution has left us with intestines and behaviours that will generally keep us alive for as long as possible under most circumstances.
"Eat food. Mainly plants. Not too much."
"Specialisation is for insects."
Both those quotes are trite and not without problems, but these are the Occam's razors I'd take to most discussions of diet and lifestyle choices.
> It’s this shift to processed foods, taking place all over the world, that’s contributing to a rising epidemic of obesity and related diseases. If most of the world ate more local fruits and vegetables, a little meat, fish, and some whole grains (as in the highly touted Mediterranean diet), and exercised an hour a day, that would be good news for our health—and for the planet.
I believe this is accurate, but the cynic in me says the obvious solutions by in large aren't going to be adopted.
1. The idea that a balanced diet that largely avoids processed foods is likely to be most healthy is logical, but it's not very sexy. More extreme Diets (note the captial "D") gain mainstream popularity because they are usually based on a seemingly compelling narrative. Paleo, while hardly the worst Diet that has been popularized in the last decade, is a good example of this.
2. The reality is that most people aren't going to exercise an hour a day and maintain a healthy diet[1]. There's also the issue of how the average person exercises. While I wouldn't suggest that everybody jump into HIIT or train like a professional athlete, a lot of what you see in a typical big box gym is the fitness world's equivalent of processed foods: people aren't getting a whole lot out of what they're doing. There's not enough intensity, far too much emphasis is placed on isolated/non-functional exercises, etc.
This is a great point. My poison of choice is the rowing machine. A good erg piece is hard. The correct pace makes you think, "Shit, I don't know if I can do this" at the halfway point and makes you beg for a quick death at the 3/4 point.
I get weird stares from the folks who flounce around on the elliptical on the lowest resistance setting for twenty minutes and wonder why they aren't losing any weight. Like, I get "baby steps" and all that, and I get the fact that doing anything is better than nothing at all, but for me, the entire point of getting in better shape is to push myself even harder. If you're not pushing yourself to improve, why are you even showing up at the gym to begin with?
I joke that I'm not even getting any fitter; I'm just increasing my capacity for suffering.
To elaborate on your comment: part of the challenge is that without professional assistance, it can be difficult for the average person to develop a fitness plan that will produce meaningful results in a safe fashion. Lots of people are limited by existing injuries, and others create injury by jumping in and pushing themselves too hard too fast.
Another challenge is that true fitness requires you to push yourself in different ways. Far too many people work out in a one-dimensional fashion. It's easy to jump on a treadmill or do the same free weight exercises day in and day out. But there are real limits to what most people can achieve without a well-rounded plan. One-dimensional workouts are why, for instance, you have guys walking around with impressive biceps, pot belly stomachs and chicken legs, and who can't do 10 minutes of moderate intensity steady state cardio without huffing and puffing.
> We have gotten so good at processing foods that for the first time in human evolution, many humans are getting more calories than they burn in a day.
Uhm... That statement seems a little odd/imprecise/unqualified.
I guarantee every single one of our ancestors was able to, on average, obtain more food-calories than they needed... for all of the days and years it took them to grow up and procreate your next ancestor.
every single one of our ancestors was able to, on average, obtain more food-calories than they needed
I think what's lost in the discussion when looking at food consumption from a calorie-centric view is that non-processed foods require energy to process them. This is due to sugars/carbohydrates being trapped in matrices of cellulose, which require a lot of chewing and digesting to extract the maximum amount of energy.
Processed foods on the other hand are just that, processed. A machine has pre-chewed and pre-digested your food into a neat package. Now the energy required to extract the maximum amount of value has been lowered significantly, so you wind up with more energy than you need. But it gets worse...
Glycaemic Index. When sugars/carbohydrates are slowly extracted from a thick matrix of cellulose, they're delivered slowly but surely to your system. Highly processed foods have done away with most of the cellulose or at the very least broken it down significantly. Eating these processed foods you get what's generally called a sugar rush. Your blood sugar spikes, insulin is released to deal with this incredible spike however the spike only lasts for a short period - now you're having a sugar crash.
You lose your temper easily, you can't think straight...you reach for another soda, burger or fries. The cycle repeats.
This doesn't even touch on what happens to your digestive system when you remove a significant amount of fiber from your diet by eating highly processed foods. Not only does fiber clean your digestive system and keep things moving smoothly, your gut-flora converts the fiber into short chain fatty acids, which play a role in mitigating intestinal inflammation [0].
Not everything that has been processed is bad. Just like taking an aspirin pill works much better than trying to get pain relief by eating white willow bark, some processed foods are concentrated goodness. Whey protein, resistant starches and partially defatted coconut flour are all absolutely amazing ingredients that are significantly healthier than the whole foods they came from.
I believe they're alluding to the massive caloric surpluses (often times 1000-4000 over maintenance) which are fairly common, hence the prevalence of obesity.
Eating whole, unprocessed, natural foods is great, but the science behind the paleo diet being “the one and only diet that ideally fits our genetic makeup” - I mean if that literally doesn't sound like dogma, I don't know what does.
There is no "one and only" stone age diet - you ate what was around you! The Inuit aren't eating oranges and spinach, that stuff doesn't grow in the tundra. Similarly, you won't be eating deer and bison in Greece, but you will be eating fish and olives.
There are societies across many geographic regions with long life expectancies, and their diets vary wildly.
The Grecians eat lots of fruits, veggies, olive oil, fish, goat milk and wine. The Japanese eat soybeans, sweet potatoes, white rice, seaweed, and fish. Sardinians eat lots of game, goat cheese/milk, beans, and barley. Each is home to peoples with the longest life expectancy on earth today, and each has at least one staple that is not considered paleo friendly.
Alan Aragon did a great talk critiquing the paleo diet, which you can read more about here[1].
[1] http://www.nsca.com/uploadedfiles/nsca/inactive_content/prog...