I was talking with a friend recently and she asked if I had heard of the “paleo diet”. A friend of hers had started it, had lost a lot of weight and said she felt better so naturally my friend was intrigued.
And then my friend said, “Is it like one of those fad diets? Does it really work?”
For those of you not familiar with the paleo diet, here’s the basic premise (and there are a number of labels for the paleo diet: Primal Blueprint, The Paleo Diet, Caveman Diet, Stone Age Diet, Evolutionary Diet among others):
- Modern diets make us ill.
- Modern diets make us ill because we are consuming foods that conflict with our evolutionary biology.
- What our ancestors ate 10,000 years ago included various meats with vegetables, nuts, fruits, but did not include legumes, dairy, or grains.
- We should then abandon the modern diets and move back at least 10000 years to the paleolithic era and eat what our ancestors ate at that time to better align ourselves (and our genes) with what our bodies are built to digest.
Does The Paleo Diet Plan Work?
The first question is, does the paleo diet plan work? If you switch to a paleo diet, will you be healthier, lose excess fat, lower your blood pressure, improve your cholesterol?
For many people, the answer is yes.
When you remove refined sugar and carbohydrates, processed foods, sugary drinks, refined grains, from your diet, regardless of what you call the diet, guess what happens?
You’ll lose excess fat, lower your blood pressure, improve your cholesterol, feel better, and have more energy.
In most cases. It’s not a guarantee. Why? Because out biology is not precisely the same from person to person. Some people have a high tolerance for carbohydrate and can process the sugar much more easily than others for example.
Are The Paleo Diet Assumptions True?
The paleo diet is based on certain assumptions and those assumptions are then “confirmed” by the presence of positive results.
This is, of course, flawed logic. It’s a common thought process in physical therapy. We make assumptions about treatments, for example, the reason your back hurts is that your fascia is stuck someplace and you need to have it “unglued”. So, we do some manual procedure to you, you feel better which then confirms the hypothesis that the fascia was stuck. But, what’s missing is proof that 1) fascia gets stuck 2) you can reliably detect stuck fascia and 3) a specific procedure can unstick it.
Is there any proof that our biology requires that we abandon dairy, legumes, and grains in order to be healthy? And is there proof that our ancestors ate a specific way or specific foods?
The short answer is no. The paleo diet assumption is that our genetic makeup is the same now as it was 10,000 to 2.5 million years ago which of course it’s not. The most obvious example is the evolutionary adaption to dairy. Yes, some people are lactose intolerant but there are far more who have genetically adapted themselves to digest milk, for example. We also now have the ability to function at high altitudes and have become resistant to malaria – more examples of adaptations.
Watch the video below to get an in-depth analysis of what “paleo” really means and especially check out the section from 9:45 – 14:00. I think you’ll find that piece really eye-opening.
Now, if you are “married” to the paleo diet, you’ll probably be a little angry right about now. But watch the video and evaluate the facts before you send me an irate email or post a angry comment. Keep in mind that the argument posited in the video is about the assumptions of the paleo diet and not on whether removing refined carbs, sugar, processed foods and sugary drinks is good for you (just like I don’t argue that manual therapy helps people but rather the assumption is “unsticks” fascia).
[youtube_sc url=”http://youtu.be/BMOjVYgYaG8″ autohide=”0″ rel=”0″]
The China Study
And then there’s the China Study to make things even more confusing – a 20-year study of rural Chinese eating habits and chronic disease.
To summarize, the results of the study suggest that you get 80 percent of your calories from plant-based carbohydrates, 10 percent from fat and 10 percent from protein (from nuts and seeds; not meat). The author maintains that meat sources are a delivery mechanism for disease and carcinogens.
So, how is it possible that in one place on Earth people thrive on a meatless diet while someplace else, people thrive on an entirely meat centric diet?
Adaptation is the most likely answer. It’s possible that the rural Chinese adapted to the food sources available which, by the way, happen to be very health, whole foods.
The paleo diet is a clean, low carbohydrate diet, a “whole foods” diet, but the idea that we should eat like a caveman because we’re genetically wired to, is perhaps clever marketing or packaging but in reality, it’s misleading.
What to Do
If you want to follow the “paleo diet”, you’re really following a low carbohydrate, clean eating lifestyle without grains, dairy, and legumes. That’s really all there is to it.
But you have to figure out what works for you. I, for example, am relative carbohydrate intolerant. I can’t eat much of any bread or pasta, for example. I don’t feel very good and I gain weight fast. My wife, however, doesn’t have that problem at all. I follow a low carb, higher protein and fat. I avoid gluten as well but that’s my personal preference.
Eating a wide variety of whole foods is a reasonably sound strategy. Keep in mind though that you may need to fine tune how much carbohydrate you eat based on your physiology and your activity level.
The following are great resources for understanding the relationship between carbohydrate, fat, protein and your health so you can make your own decisions.
