The longer I write this blog and read about nutrition, the more interested I become in the idea that diet is the way that we can stay healthy into old age. The key to longevity, as far as I can tell, is to avoid heart disease in cancer. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women, in the United States. Cancer is second. It’s very likely that a significant percentage of people reading this blog will eventually die from one of these two. The older I get, the more intent I become on not being a heart disease or cancer statistic.
When last we left, I was reading a new book
about a diet based in low-fat veganism, and I was commenting on how ridiculous I think the Atkins diet is. When the author of a diet book advises you to eat all the bacon you want and then dies from a fall, overweight, with heart disease and high blood pressure, it should go without saying that this isn’t a diet you want to try.
But what about Paleo diets? They aren’t “low carb” in the Atkins sense of the phrase, they’re a whole different story, chock full of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and grass-fed meat. As someone who loves anthropology, the story is fascinating. Paleo diet proponents claim that we aren’t evolved to eat grains, and a diet stocked with them (refined grains are obviously out, but they’re talking about whole grains, too), leads to disease.
The Paleo Diet
The low-fat vegan diet proponents (T. Colin Campbell
, Dean Ornish, Joel Furhman, John McDougall), whose books I’ve read and studied, are all medical doctors with multiple articles among them. Their diets have been the subject of numerous studies. Ornish and Furhman have both reversed heart disease, and I recently read that McDougall’s specialty is bringing women back to health from breast cancer.
The Paleo diet proponents are still new to me, but the most popular writer seems to be Loren Cordain, who wrote The Paleo Diet. He’s frequently referred to as “Dr. Cordain”, but my search to uncover what his doctorate is in has been unsuccessful so far. In his book he calls himself an avid researcher of “health, nutrition, and fitness”.
Paleo dieters are all over the web now, and they’ve brought a lot to the discussion. Put “Paleo Diet” into Google, and you’ll find a wealth of links to sort through. Both the low-fat vegans and the Paleo proponents are very concerned with heart disease – the statistics they quote match up throughout my books, and both sides claim that their diet will keep you from developing it. The low-fat vegan proponents claim (and have proven, in several studies), and their diet will even reverse it.
The general Paleo viewpoint, from my reading:
- The genes of modern humans haven’t changed significantly from their stone-age counterparts.
- These stone age people were short-lived only because of trauma (injuries, falls, etc), and were otherwise extremely healthy; “Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them.” (1)
- In modern hunter-gatherer societies…..”10-20% of the population is 60 years of age or older. These elderly people have been shown to be generally free of the signs and symptoms of chronic disease (obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol levels) that universally afflict the elderly in western societies.” (2)
- These paleolithic humans at a diet composed of meat, fruits, vegetables, and nuts, and that is what we should be eating today.
- Grains, beans, and potatoes, are all toxic when raw and retain some of that toxicity when cooked. They’re also low in nutrients and have a high glycemic index. (1) Replacing them with fruits and vegetables is the healthiest alternative. Incidentally, raw food advocates say the same thing.
Paleo dieters claim that by eating this way, they’ve recovered their health and lost weight.
Where To Go From Here?
I’d hoped to write all day, picking pieces out from both sides of the debate, but my life is just too busy with other things right now, including teaching myself how to cook (let’s get some more recipes on here!), finding out what the weird smell is in my office, teaching my daughter to read, and getting our household ready to move back to Seattle in a few months.
INSTEAD, what I’ve decided to do is to just pull out conversation points on all this as I go along, post them, and see where we end up.
On the Dangers of Becoming a Google Scientist
One of the Paleo blogs I really enjoy is Son of Grok. In a post on 7/14/09, called Where Has the Motivation Gone? , he said:
Another thing that kills me is all the Google Scientists around. I don’t mean scientists employed by Google, I instead mean the guy who Googles a topic, does a bit of reading on it and suddenly thinks he is the Sir Isaac Newton of the topic. Also in this group are the micro-nutrient micro-analyzers and the people who try to way over science the approach in my opinion.
I don’t want either myself or this blog to ever assume it has all the answers. I love learning, I love reading, and I love sleuthing out information. I don’t know where I’ll end up, but whatever I end up doing the most of, I never want to give the impression that someone doing it differently is, by definition, doing it wrong. No matter what anyone says, I deeply believe that every BODY is different, that what works for one person isn’t going to work for every person. If anything, I think that’s the missing ingredient in all this. What if A LOT OF THINGS are right? What if it isn’t just one thing?
Isn’t that more exciting than one side having all the answers?
Questions? Comments?
Do you have questions you want answers to? Are you befuddled by any of this stuff? Or do you feel like you have answers you want to share? Comment away! I’ll make a list and address everything in future posts.
Links on this page:
As we all know, everything is made better by frying, especially vegetables. Well, now I’ve discovered that it works on tofu, too. I just went into the kitchen hungry, and thought I’d try another Kind Diet recipe: Crispy Tofu Slices with Orange Dipping Sauce. 
. But reading every day, or every evening, means that when I go to bed I don’t sit up until 2am with my headlamp and my book. And getting more sleep means I’m more awake during the day and have a much more cheerful attitude, which makes it a lot easier to eat better and stay on track. Win win!