It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
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It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
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Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#2Thanks for finding this tokenadult.
I've been trying to convince my wife (who has a degree in dietetics and a minor in anthropology/archeology) to write about this subject for a while, but food and diet are such visceral topics for people that she finds discussions of the topics incredibly frustrating.
Food, language, gender norms, these are all fields of study where there is substantial research and a lot of resolute but unfounded claims by people with axes to grind, or products to sell.
All of which is to say, there's not a lot of skepticism, even amongst populations who claim to be generally analytical and skeptical.
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#3and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part.
I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet.
Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoid high amounts of carbs & sugar now. How could I not feel better? It doesn't have anything to do with evolutionary adaptability.
edit: knowtheory below is referring to something I edited out regarding an attempt to double blind myself to ensure this wasn't all in my head.
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#4>But how does one determine what the prevalence of cardiovascular disease was in the ancient past? Time and the decomposition it brings are brutal on the flimsy meat of which we are made, and it is uncommon to have access to anything other than bones, much less bodies intact enough to be examined for signs of atherosclerotic disease. Even so, however, there have been indications that the idea that ancient humans didn’t suffer from atherosclerosis is a comforting myth, the most recent of which is a study published a week ago online in The Lancet by Prof. Randall C. Thompson of Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute and an international team of investigators entitled Atherosclerosis across 4000 years of human history: the Horus study of four ancient populations. Basically, it was a study of 137 different mummies from four different geographic locations spanning 4,000 years.
The whole time I was reading this I could only think, "science is great!" Thanks for posting this.
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#5Paleo falls into the same trap as most ideologies. Some percent of True Believers become jerks about it ("but it's so obvious! Just look at [weakly correlated thing]!"), and end up making the whole group look bad.
It's unfortunate, because most ideologies don't seem to be made to alienate. We get along fine as long as we don't bring up our pet beliefs.
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#6and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part. I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet. Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoi…
See, that's just fine! It's awesome that you've found a diet that makes you feel better.
But here's the thing. You can't double blind yourself. That's the whole issue with blind trials. Double blind trials require that you do not and can not determine whether you are in the treatment group or not. Additionally, unless you're having an unrelated person prepare the food, w/o any knowledge of which foods are in the "paleo" group vs the control group, you're not operating double blind.
If it's just you and another person, it would be challenging to set up a double blind experiment (although i'd be interested to hear what you tried).
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#7and this is why I wish the paleo-fanatics would stop harping on the "evolutionary based" part. I eat pretty much paleo. I avoid grains, I limit dairy consumption, I avoid a lot of sugar in my food. However, a lot of the "science" behind paleo is bullshit. The name & culture is the worst thing that could have happened to the diet. Food is important to your health. I eat a lot of vegetables, high quality meat, and avoi…
See, that's just fine! It's awesome that you've found a diet that makes you feel better. But here's the thing. You can't double blind yourself. That's the whole issue with blind trials. Double blind trials require that you do not and can not determine whether you are in the treatment group or not. Additionally, unless you're having an unrelated person prepare the food, w/o any knowledge of which foods are in the "pal…
I removed that. I figured that I would get some flak. :P
I did have my roommate prepare the food. Another one of my roommates swapped/labeled the food and then went to class, no interaction. It was mostly because he didn't believe that I could feel it and that it was mostly in my head. (which I totally understand, I was pretty worried about that as well)
We switched out white flour for some almond flour. We also did another one where he sweetened something using honey and another using corn syrup. (I could totally taste the difference there though)
Certainly not rigorous, but enough to make me pretty sure it isn't entirely a placebo effect. I'm planning on getting a Celiac Sprue test at some point.
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#8Dietdoctor.com <= Great source (and the guy is actually a real doctor).
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#9Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional science that in general the more processed the food is the more harmful it is for us.
There is also the reverse problem, illustrated by the condescending attitude toward herbalism in this article, of people who idealize modernity, and for example believe only medicine in the form of pills can be effective, even though plants may contain exactly the same chemical compounds. I am not saying there is no fraud in herbalism, sure there is plenty of it, but herbs in general clearly can have strong both positive and negative effect on physiology, which is really quite obvious if you consider the variety of herbs existing and that they all contain lots of different chemical compounds.
In general I think it is ridiculous to ignore the thousands of years of experimentation and exploration of our ancestors just because it wasn't "science-based".
Re: It’s a part of my paleo fantasy, it’s a part of my paleo dream
#10Calling the "naturalistic fallacy" a fallacy is a bit of an overstretch IMO, sure natural=better is not a rule true 100% of the time, but nevertheless until sufficient evidence has not been accumulated that some of the adjustments we make to our lifestyle are not harmful to us health-wise avoiding them is not an unreasonable heuristic to follow. One example is how it became clear in the last years in nutritional scie…
I think part of what the author sees as problematic is the loose definition of what "natural" means - to use your herbalism example, some people consider herbs to be automatically better than {mainstream_treatment_x} just because it is "natural", for a random value of "natural".
So you are probably saying the same / a similar thing as the author with slightly different emphasis.
edit: grammar, spelling mistakes, mainstream_treatment_x instead of "better tested"