Paleolithic diet?

[BrainGlutton]

(Maybe this should go in GD or GQ – but it’s about food – Mods, move as appropriate.)

I never even heard of the Paleolithic-style diet before, but it’s a featured article in Wikipedia this week. Apparently it’s based on the idea that we have substantially the same digestive systems and nutritional needs as our Old Stone Age ancestors, therefore the healthiest diet for us is one as near as possible to theirs.

Permitted foods

Any foods that can be hunted or fished, such as meat, offal and seafood, and that can be gathered, such as eggs, insects, fruit, nuts, seeds, vegetables, mushrooms, herbs and spices are allowed. Most, but not all,[43] advocates allow only those root vegetables that are edible raw (but can be eaten cooked),[5] or those that have a low glycemic load, such as beets, rutabagas, carrots, celeriac and turnips.[44] Natural sugars, including honey, maple sugar and date sugar are allowed in small amounts by some.[5] Practitioners are advised to drink mainly water, but certain other beverages, such as tea, coffee, juices, diet sodas and alcoholic beverages, are permitted by some advocates under certain conditions.[5][6] Some versions of the diet permit the use of oils with a low omega-6/omega-3 ratio, such as flaxseed oil, canola oil and olive oil,[6] or oils derived from foods which can be obtained and produced through Paleolithic means and are edible in their natural, uncooked state.[5] Examples include sesame oil, olive oil, and safflower oil, but not oils derived from beans (e.g. peanut oil) or grains (e.g. corn oil).[5] Not all proponents of the diet allow the use of oils, as they are a processed food.[29]
Restricted foods

The foods falling into this category are mainly grains, legumes (including peanuts), dairy products, salt and refined sugar (including table sugar, corn syrup, fructose and molasses). Practitioners are sometimes advised to avoid root vegetables that are said to be inedible raw, such as potatoes (but can be eaten cooked),[5] or that have a high glycemic load, including cassava, potatoes, taro, parsnips, sweet potatoes and yams.[44] But such root vegetables are not excluded by all advocates.[43] Some, but not all,[29] proponents of the diet allow the use of certain oils.[5][6] The diet also excludes yeast-containing foods, including baked goods, pickled foods, vinegar, fermented foods and beverages, as well as processed meats (made with nitrites and additives), such as hot dogs, bacon, sausage, and lunch meats. Some versions of the diet exclude fatty meats[6] and cashews.[5]

1. Is this really healthy compared with our standard modern diet, or other diets?

2. Are there any other good reasons to follow it or not to follow it?

3. Is this just another name for the Atkins diet?

4. Got any recipes?

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

1. Is this really healthy compared with our standard modern diet, or other diets?

Many medical professionals are touting similar diets.

2. Are there any other good reasons to follow it or not to follow it?

It’s better to eat a greater variety of foods, and to eat more unprocessed foods (especially carbs).

3. Is this just another name for the Atkins diet?

No. More like South Beach.

4. Got any recipes?

Look at South Beach diet book or Low Glycemic Index diet books. They’re pretty much along these lines.

[BrainGlutton]

@John Mace

It’s better to eat a greater variety of foods, and to eat more unprocessed foods (especially carbs).

Well, that’s still related to the first question (health). When I asked about “other reasons” I was wondering whether the cultivation/gathering of these paleofoods might be more ecofriendly or locavorous than what most people eat. (On that note, I very much doubt it would be possible for this globe to adequately feed 6 billion hunter-gatherers.)

[John_Mace]

@BrainGlutton

Well, that’s still related to the first question (health). When I asked about “other reasons” I was wondering whether the cultivation/gathering of these paleofoods might be more ecofriendly or locavorous than what most people eat.

Don’t know about that. You’re still eating a lot of the same foods, but with less processing. Maybe the extra processing has some environmental impact. And I don’t know what locavorous means.

(On that note, I very much doubt it would be possible for this globe to adequately feed 6 billion hunter-gatherers.)

Probably impossible. But note that your cite says the diet is supposed to “emulate” the diet of our Paleolithic ancestors, not copy their hunter/gather lifestyle.

[Malthus]

Seems to me that the diet may well be a good one but the purported justification is unlikely in the extreme to be the reason.

For one, I would guess that our paleolithic ancestors’ diet varied considerably based on their environment between those who lived essentially carnivorous diets from big-game hunting through those who lived more off of gathering fruits and vegitables right through to those who apparently ate mostly shellfish (I remember that on some seacoasts there are huge middens of shells from prehistoric eaters) - there was, as far as can be known, no single “paleolithic diet” everyone in the past ate, and therefore no reason to believe humans are uniquely evolved for a particular diet.

Indeed, if anything has characterized humans, it is a willingness to eat just about anything remotely edible.

[John_Mace]

But even if there were multiple diets back in those days, we can be certain that none of them contained something like Linguini Alfredo, Luck Stars Cereal, or even a bagel w/ cream cheese.

[Cisco]

I read the book when it came out a couple years ago. If I recall correctly, it’s ‘The Paloelithic Diet for Athletes’. It’s amazing how ubiquitous processed foods are in our diet. You really realize it once you start trying to cut them out. I couldn’t stick with it, but then I’m not much of an athlete and I’m not overweight, so I didn’t have a big incentive.

*Also, on edit, what Malthus said. The Paleolithic angle was a bit too much of a hard-sell for me. They should’ve used it as more of a metaphor.

[Exapno_Mapcase]

@Cisco

I read the book when it came out a couple years ago. If I recall correctly, it’s ‘The Paloelithic Diet for Athletes’.

There is such a 2005 book, but the linked article clearly shows that the Stone Age or Paleolithic diet has been the subject of books for decades.

Voegtlin, Walter L (1975). The stone age diet: Based on in-depth studies of human ecology and the diet of man. Vantage Press. ISBN 0533013143.

Eaton, S. Boyd; Marjorie Shostak; Melvin Konner (1988). The Paleolithic Prescription: A Program of Diet & Exercise and a Design for Living. New York: Harper & Row. ISBN 0060158719.

Audette, Ray V.; Gilchrist, Troy; Raymond V. Audette; Eades, Michael R. (2000). Neanderthin : Eat Like a Caveman to Achieve a Lean, Strong, Healthy Body. New York: St. Martin’s Paperbacks. ISBN 0312975910.

Cordain, Loren (2002). The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat. Hoboken, N.J., New York: Wiley. ISBN 0471267554.

[John_Mace]

Yeah, the Paleolithic hypothesis is one that is difficult, if not impossible to prove. And it’s tricky to separate diet from the rest of a person’s lifestyle. Still, I think it makes sense to eat as much unprocessed foods as possible, and to eat many different kinds of foods, too-- there’s lots of medical evidence out there to support that idea.

[Malthus]

@John Mace

But even if there were multiple diets back in those days, we can be certain that none of them contained something like Linguini Alfredo, Luck Stars Cereal, or even a bagel w/ cream cheese.

Certainly. And there may well be good reasons to avoid processed foods.

I am simply saying that the claim we are uniquely evolved for any particular diet (and therefore that is the reason it is good for you) is probably false.

Indeed, throughout human history people have been adapting to unknown foods - first within different environments within Africa, then in the radiation out of Africa, then in the disruption caused by the Ice Ages, the eventual exploitation by Homo Sapients of ecological nices from one end of the world’s environmernt to another, then in the developments in some places of agriculture and pastoralism (the latter leading to stuff like cream cheese) - think of the difference in diet between an Innuit, an Iroquis, a Celt, a Mongol and an Polynesian Islander … and now, with all sorts of processed and packaged foods.

Point is that human diet has never been particularly static. True processed foods are new, and true they may be bad for you (though this would require proof), but the notion that there is some diet that humans are uniquely adapted to simply doesn’t hold water. Variety has always it seems been the order of the day.

[TimeWinder]

Paleolithic humans rarely lived out of their teens. I’d rather be healthier than that, thanks.

[vibrotronica]

I have my own form of a palelithic diet. My wife is a vegetarian (actually, a pescaterian, as she eats fish), and I am not. We don’t keep any meat in the house, so probably of my meals are vegetarian, and most of the meals with meat in them are fish. But I still enjoy the occasional hamburger or steak. I figure back in the day when we were hunter/gatherers, folks subsisted on mostly plants with the occasional meat feast after a successful hunting trip.

But whether I’m full of shit (which is highly likely) or not, I do know that my health has improved since I started eating like this.

[John_Mace]

@TimeWinder

Paleolithic humans rarely lived out of their teens. I’d rather be healthier than that, thanks.

You have misinterpreted the data. Unless you have evidence that the diet those people ate was a cause of lower life expectancy. Rather, it is more likely the inability to maintain a stable food supply, lack of medical care, and occupational hazards of living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

[Malthus]

@John Mace

You have misinterpreted the data. Unless you have evidence that the diet those people ate was a cause of lower life expectancy. Rather, it is more likely the inability to maintain a stable food supply, lack of medical care, and occupational hazards of living a hunter/gatherer lifestyle.

While this is certainly the case, the issue to my mind is this: we do not know from actual paleolithic peoples whether the paleolithic diet(s) was/were better for such things as heart disease and cancer, since real paleolithic peoples rarely lived long enough to suffer from them. Are increases in these ailments a result of “modern diet” or simply a result of more people living longer?

[John_Mace]

@Malthus

While this is certainly the case, the issue to my mind is this: we do not know from actual paleolithic peoples whether the paleolithic diet(s) was/were better for such things as heart disease and cancer, since real paleolithic peoples rarely lived long enough to suffer from them. Are increases in these ailments a result of “modern diet” or simply a result of more people living longer?

Well, we don’t have a clear picture of what a Paleolithic diet would be, although we do have some idea. And there is lots of evidence that eating the kinds of things that were more commonly eaten then is better at staving off heart disease in us, notwithstanding the fact that we can assure ourselves of a regular supply of such food whereas our Paleolithic ancestors could not.

And we do know that many of our modern diseases occur at a lower frequency in modern peoples who live close to the way our Paleolithic ancestor most likely did. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to assume that a diet of lean meat, varied plant material and whole grains was also healthy 50k years ago.

But if we want to stick to things that have been absolutely proven to be true, then you’re right. We haven’t, and probably can’t, prove it.

[BMalion]

I tried that diet once but the brontosaurus ribs made my car fall over.

[detop]

You might want to look at this site

[Malthus]

@John Mace

Well, we don’t have a clear picture of what a Paleolithic diet would be, although we do have some idea. And there is lots of evidence that eating the kinds of things that were more commonly eaten then is better at staving off heart disease in us, notwithstanding the fact that we can assure ourselves of a regular supply of such food whereas our Paleolithic ancestors could not.

And we do know that many of our modern diseases occur at a lower frequency in modern peoples who live close to the way our Paleolithic ancestor most likely did. I don’t think it’s much of a leap to assume that a diet of lean meat, varied plant material and whole grains was also healthy 50k years ago.

But if we want to stick to things that have been absolutely proven to be true, then you’re right. We haven’t, and probably can’t, prove it.

That is to reverse matters. A diet may well be healthy for us today, but this may have absolutely nothing to do with the allegedly “paleothihic nature” of that diet.

For example you have said that a diet rich in, among other things, “whole grains”, is healthful. That may be so, but at least according to the link provided by detop, our paleolithic ancestors didn’t in fact eat “whole grains” - they ate no grains at all:

Consequently, the present-day edible grass seeds simply would have been unavailable to most of mankind until after their domestication because of their limited geographic distribution. Also, the wild version of these grains were much smaller than the domesticated versions and extremely difficult to harvest [Zohary 1969].

So here is an example of a food you yourself have tagged as “healthy” which in fact would be just as alien to the vast majority of our paleolithic ancestors’ digestions as Wonder Bread™.

You may well be totally right that whole grains are good for you - but it is not because our ancestors ate them, and thus we are specially adapted.

[John_Mace]

@Malthus

That is to reverse matters. A diet may well be healthy for us today, but this may have absolutely nothing to do with the allegedly “paleothihic nature” of that diet.

Agreed.

For example you have said that a diet rich in, among other things, “whole grains”, is healthful. That may be so, but at least according to the link provided by detop, our paleolithic ancestors didn’t in fact eat “whole grains” - they ate no grains at all:

Well, it’s generally thought that we started eating wild, whole grains long before agriculture was developed. So I guess it depend on how you define the borderline between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic. And I just included whole grains in contrast to refined grains. In our modern diet it’s hard to avoid grains altogether, so better to go for the whole grains than the non-whole grains. Our early, pre-agriculturalist ancestors surely ate whole grains. But I don’t think you’d be missing anything if you did eliminate them from your diet.

[Fear_Itself]

I find the restriction against some high glycemic load root vegetables to be a modern contrivance that probably does not reflect a paleolithic diet. Cassava, taro, parsnips, and yams are all ancient tubers that were probably available to our paleolithic ancestors in much the same form as we see them today.