How to Keep Feces Out of Your Bloodstream (or Lose 10 Pounds in 14 Days)

Any particular books you recommend?

Paleo targets overall health, not specifically fat reduction or cardiovascular health. That means that one of its goals is to reduce or eliminate things like long-term degenerative diseases or psychological problems, things which we decided, a long, long time ago, to accept as "natural occurrences" that are manageable only with medication, and not issues of dietary intake. This is a bold goal, of course, so it's right to be skeptical. If it really works, it can be tested. Our bias against the radical ideas comes from only being able to look backwards a few generations of people, all of whom have had largely the same diet. It is only fairly recently that we've gotten this explosion of experimental diet strategies, aided by new research and more diverse food availability. I'm into trying them as a kind of hobby and form of general life-improvement, myself, and for people who suffer from diseases with no known medicinal cure, it offers a lot of hope.

If we are looking only for a culprit for late-twentieth-century obesity, gluten doesn't enter into it. Instead we should look towards the changes in average diet over that time - i.e. increased intake of carbs, refined(fiberless) carbs, and carbs from sugar, and a shift away from animal fats and pressed crude vegetable oils towards solvent-extracted and refined vegetable oils. To explain a broad effect in the population, one has to look towards broad changes, and those are the main things that have changed.

Side note: The popular tendency to emphasize vegetables and/or fruits in diet holds a lot of commercial appeal(since fresh plant foods have difficult, expensive storage logistics, making them more prestigious, and fruits can have their sugar concentrated with drying or juicing, turning them into easily-saleable vice goods) but it's a form of feel-good bikeshedding. The "80% of the problem" issues are different, broader, and harder to completely solve: ideal fats/carbs/protein balance, recognition of allergies, intolerances, and toxicity, and price/time/quality/sustainability ratios. A real solution to those things needs both top-down cooperation and bottom-up education.

I personally haven't seen a huge difference in trying gluten/caesin-free, except possibly for withdrawal symptoms that cumulate in the devouring of multiple bowls of milk and cereal. I may try it again in the future, but while I can usually avoid gluten, I find it particularly hard to get rid of dairy; it helps calm down coffee's acidity, and cheese is one of my preferred snacks when out of the house.

As for the timing of the obesity epidemic, HFCS hit the market in 1975. Coincidence? Our diets became a lot less paleo when they started putting that in everything.

People with Coeliac disease react to, and have trouble digesting gluten. However, just because you might not get diarrhoea from eating wheat does not mean that the lectins in grain aren't causing you problems. I can eat wheat fine, I grew up eating lots of bread. However, I do better on a grain free paleo diet -- as do many people.

From the Article:

Some of you, however, may think you have no issues here. You have eaten grains, legumes, and dairy your whole life and are “fine.” Well, maybe. But I suspect that is not the case. I’ll bet that if you completely remove these Neolithic foods from your diet for one month, you will notice a dramatic improvement in how you feel and perform. Why? Because if you are consuming these foods, I’ll wager you have gut irritation and other systemic inflammation issues.

Also, you say: "We all need some mix of protein, carbohydrates, fiber, lipids and vitamins". That's not true -- there is no such thing as a required carbohydrate.

Finally -- please read "Good Calories, Bad Calories" to get a full understanding of how conventional wisdom (such as what is taught in nursing, and even medicine) is completely messed up.