121–130 of 199 posts
I am really stunned, how rigorously people protect their right to disease, premature aging and unnatural death. Do not question so called fruits of progress but require immediate proofs of mechanisms that have successfully worked for millions of years.
Disclaimer: I started reading on the paleo diet about a month ago, after friends recommended it as a support for my strength & conditioning routines. I've been loosely following the guidelines for the past 2 weeks. I do see an improvement in my sleep quality and in the past week have noticed a spike in my swimming endurance. This article highlights one aspect of the scientific community that I abhor, the petty disput…
>> "I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and legumes." >> "I read reports and testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes performing on it." I think this is the wrong way round. When people make claims that stuff we've been eating for thousands of years (bread, cereals, grains etc.) are actually really bad for us, the burden of proof is on them . If anyone could actually prove t…
I'm not sure if this should also apply with stuff that we put inside our body. In any case, not all of us are willing to wait that long, while we obviously see problems with the status quo. I choose to rather just make a judgement call based on social cues.
>> On top of that Paleo promotes some claims that are clearly ridiculous, e.g. that burning fat for fuel == burning carbs for fuel. They have totally different consequences.
This is inconsistent with anything I've read on this diet, but would be closer to the Low Carb High Fat diet, which I agree would be detrimental to an intense training regiment. May I suggest that you and I were not introduced to the same paleo diet? I recommend that you look up Robb Wolf.
>> Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food. Or lots of anything. Just eat lots of green stuff, and make sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure calories in Oddly, this is very consistent with what is promoted in the diet.
>> It mystifies me how otherwise-intelligent people can get so caught up in fads such as Paleo, backed up by flimsy pseudo-science.
Attempting to belittle people who choose to try the diet doesn't make you smarter and certainly doesn't prove nor validate your arguments.
>> My theory is that they appeal to the contrarian in us - after all, they're delightfully counter-intuitive in some ways (eating lots of steak can be good for me?!).
That is indeed only a theory. On the other hand, maybe some of us actually do see some results.
>> And if you still think it does, look up the diets of the top 10 athletes in basically any sport & explain to me why none of them are on Paleo.
The diet is extremely prevalent in the crossfit circles (it's even increasingly overshadowing the official diet, which is The Zone diet) and mixed martial arts (many of my training mates switch to it prior to competition). During my own research I stumbled upon this interview http://youtu.be/r-WRn8UttXw?t=10m (interview starts 10 minutes in the video, somewhere within the first 2 minutes after it begins Joe Rogan mentions having talked to many fighters who are on it).
My take away: "otherwise-intelligent people" use the diet as a set of guidelines for improved health and quality of life. You can choose to take it as a religion, but then lots of things just get more difficult. If you practice a sport, you need to adapt the diet to the demands of your discipline. I recommend to look up experts who are more sport oriented (I mentioned Robb Wolf earlier).
Disclaimer: I started reading on the paleo diet about a month ago, after friends recommended it as a support for my strength & conditioning routines. I've been loosely following the guidelines for the past 2 weeks. I do see an improvement in my sleep quality and in the past week have noticed a spike in my swimming endurance. This article highlights one aspect of the scientific community that I abhor, the petty disput…
> Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is from the paleolithic? People who are on the paleo diet tell me exactly that. Anyway, they seem healthier than before they started, so taking an interest in healthier food consumption seems to work for them. As you say, the outcome is the important thing. The Paleo diet may well have made the hunter-gatherers very healthy. However, as I h…
The reason life expectancies were 35 back then was due to horrible infant and early childhood mortalities. People lived on the close order of 100 years (70-80 or so) back long before we had anything like medicine. For example:
> A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human population. [snip] At the time of the reign of emperor Augustus, the Romans decided that a saeculum was 110 years.
In other words, if you wanted to make sure everyone who had been alive for some specific event was dead, you had to wait a hundred or so years. Does that sound like the reasoning of people who expected to die before they hit fifty?
I am really stunned, how rigorously people protect their right to disease, premature aging and unnatural death. Do not question so called fruits of progress but require immediate proofs of mechanisms that have successfully worked for millions of years.
Because, of course, we know cavemen had very long lives.
The biggest problem I have with Zuk is that the entire premise of this book is based on a straw man argument. The "Paleo" in paleo diet comes from the fact that there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era (i.e. started farming). We are not emulating a caveman's diet per se, we are simply trying to find and remove what caused that original dip in health. To anyone uninformed about the paleo…
Paleo to me is certainly not a historical reenactment. I also am not one trying to recreate the standard diet in almond flour and all that. Paleo people drive me crazy being so anti-dairy; cream is a wondrous fuel. I think Dr. Harris' blog is a great source and I follow his steps best I can: http://www.archevore.com/get-started/
I began eating a quasi-paleo diet at the beginning of February including the removal of all dairy. I reintroduced dairy to see if it had any noticeable impact and it didn't, so I kept it in.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is from the paleolithic? People who are on the paleo diet tell me exactly that. Anyway, they seem healthier than before they started, so taking an interest in healthier food consumption seems to work for them. As you say, the outcome is the important thing. The Paleo diet may well have made the hunter-gatherers very healthy. However, as I h…
> I have already passed their life-expectancy The reason life expectancies were 35 back then was due to horrible infant and early childhood mortalities. People lived on the close order of 100 years (70-80 or so) back long before we had anything like medicine. For example: > A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human populatio…
I know people who claim that eating a mainly paleo diet makes them feel better. Though I am tempted to think it is less to do with removing diary , pasta etc and more to do with them actually eating some damn vegetables now.
Well, there are people who claim fasting makes them feel better, too. Or living on allegedly nothing but sun light.
I am not sure this is very good proof since e.g. not eating for a couple of days makes you feel good because it's your body trying to make you more active to gather food... so, as logical as some correlations might sound it seems flimsy to me. The best way is probably to go by blood and medical exams, to see if you actually are healthier.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is pseudo science, there are droves of scientific literature that shows that meal timing is irrelevant and that as long as macronutrient content is similar, a calorie is a calorie.
Where is the parent saying anything about meal timing? It's about the effect on your body of a particular meal. Carbs and sugars spike insulin much more than fats or protein.
Reading about any type of nutrition research has become beyond frustrating to me. There are constantly new results doing away with old truisms only to have those results, in turn, questioned and overturned by other studies and then there are basically opposing theories being found as valid, too. To make matters worse, there is an overwhelming abundance of less-than-scientific literature following the latest "fad" sci…
I figure the only real way to know what is right for you is to stick to a particular diet for awhile and see a doctor. A doctor should be able to tell you what you're deficient in and what any problems you might be suffering from. Then adjust.
I know people who claim that eating a mainly paleo diet makes them feel better. Though I am tempted to think it is less to do with removing diary , pasta etc and more to do with them actually eating some damn vegetables now.
This is exactly the kind of bias that rational people should be scared of. This is exactly the kind of thing that we have double blind controlled studies to eliminate.
EDIT: Because if you do something, and it makes you feel good, well - that's fine. But don't go around telling other people that they're wrong and doing harm to themselves by not doing this thing.