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“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

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Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#91

Post by Tichy »

akiselev wrote: post #49
ellyagg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it's a review by someone with an axe to grind about a book by someone with an axe to grind. I'm not a "Paleo" person, but the hinting in this article that folks trying to infer better living patterns from the past are loons is faintly preposterous. We have just mounds of evidence (which doubters are free to research themselves) that many pre-Agricultural societies had (and have, actually) far lower rates of t…

Can't say something like "(which doubters are free to research themselves)" and follow it up with a claim like "many pre-Agricultural societies had (and have, actually) far lower rates of the so-called "diseases of civilizations." Actually you shouldn't even want to as there's a certain problem with gathering data on populations that lived 10,000 years ago with a geographically dispersed sample size of ... oh, I don'…

This information does not just come from fossil records but also from studying living specimen, who still exist in the world today. The article mention that those people also had time to evolve, but I don't think that is much of a killer argument. Then the question would still remain (speaking of diet, which is only one aspect) why they were able to adapt to their diet and we weren't able to adapt to our diet.

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#92

Post by mekoka »

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 disputes. So on one side we have Cordain, who promotes a new diet that seems to carry some widely documented positive results, but who may be inaccurate in his notion that we haven't had time to adapt to changes in our nutrition in the past 10,000 years and may or may not be extrapolating a bit on other points. On another we have Zuk, hellbent at debunking the former's work, based solely on those arguments. Finally, we have Laura Miller, author of the article, who feels that Zuk's arguments are justification enough to dismiss proponents of the paleo diet almost as a fad.

Yes, crickets managed to adapt to their predator in 5 years, but what of the multiple examples of species that just disappeared, when another was introduced in their ecosystem? Cordain is probably wrong in some of his presumptions regarding evolution, but then Zuk just ends up pointing that out without proving anything of interest herself.

Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is from the paleolithic? Who cares when it's from? A month ago I had only a vague idea of when the paleolithic ended. If you asked me I would've said "hmm, 50k years ago?"

What convinced me was its simplicity and results. I read reports and testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes performing on it. Rather than telling me "actually, this isn't quite paleolithic" or "actually, we did have time to adapt", I would be much more interested in a study that debunks those reports, or at least attributes them to something else than the diet.

Also, I've not yet read enough on the diet in details, but from what I've garnered of its main lines, there are some specific reasons as to why certain foods should be avoided. How about looking at those arguments and then debunk them? I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and legumes.

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#93

Post by Tichy »

tjogin wrote: post #46
ellyagg wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, it's a review by someone with an axe to grind about a book by someone with an axe to grind. I'm not a "Paleo" person, but the hinting in this article that folks trying to infer better living patterns from the past are loons is faintly preposterous. We have just mounds of evidence (which doubters are free to research themselves) that many pre-Agricultural societies had (and have, actually) far lower rates of t…

Diseases of civilization are a function of congregation, not eating grains. Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury.

Still, if people from traditional societies enter the western world they tend to be afflicted even worse from civilization diseases (obesity, diabetes, strokes, heart attacks...). I think part of the problem is that our foods are engineered to trick the regulation of our food intake. Jared Diamond describes how New Guineans empty whole bottles of salt on their food, because they are much more "optimized" for craving salt.

So the energy in/energy out thing might hold, but it is just part of the problem. The real problem is how to regulate food intake appropriately.

Actually Dimaond also describes traditional people overeating to the extreme when they have meat on rare occasions (some kind of meat festival). So of course abundance of food is part of the problem - if those people had meat all the time, perhaps they would overeat immediately. But so we could still learn about sane frequencies of food intake from traditional societies.

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#94

Post by sgift »

tjogin wrote: post #84
dlytle wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the primary arguments of a keto/paleo diet is that the different diets affect how many calories your body thinks it needs, how it uses them, and how it influences behavior as a result. (Disclaimer: using imaginary numbers below to illustrate the theory.) Let's say your body typically wants 1000 calories at breakfast, and you eat 1000 calories with a heavy load of carbs. Carbohydrates with a high glycemic index…

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.

And there are droves of scientific literature that show that meal timing is important and even if macronutrient content is similar, a calorie is not a calorie.

The simple fact is: No one was able to prove anything beyond shallow platitudes ("If you eat three tons of flesh each day you will get fat too!" "If you eat nothing for month you will get lean!").

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#95

Post by cromulent »

tjogin wrote: post #71
kbenson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was rather obvious I was looking for justification as to why you thought cavemen didn't have the luxury of caloric surplus. You already made it clear that you more than doubt they they had that luxury, you definitively said they did not. Again, the question is why ?

I have no idea how cavemen lived, and it doesn't interest me all that much either, but my guess is that they weren't as sedentary and they weren't as proficient in the art of preserving food. Overall, it should have been quite difficult for most of them to create a caloric surplus, day after day. What I do know is that bodymass is lost and gained with deficits and surpluses of calories. Transient spikes in insulin an…

There's quite a lot of research with gut bacteria now and the association with obesity. It's not as simple as caloric intake, it is also the balance of the gut bacteria.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17183312

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#96

Post by Tichy »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #56

One of the things that make me wonder is the idea that there are " diseases if civilisation" (accepted, look at increases in asthma etc) and that they are caused by diet Of all the things that exist in the modern world, lead in atmosphere, weird fungicides in our furniture fire retardants, etc, why is it the one thing that is under individual control that is the main contributor to our malease - it seems far too link…

They studied what happened to people who switched to agriculture 11000 years ago, via the fossil record. Also you can watch what happens to people who lived in a traditional way and then entered society.

That way I think a lot of things you mention can be excluded - not that lead and fire retardants are not dangerous, but that is another area of problems.

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#97

Post by disbelief »

I'm a little confused by the "10,000 years is plenty of time" argument, particularly when the crickets in Hawaii or lactase persistence examples are used as evidence. To me, these were relatively minor evolutionary steps. I'd even go as far as to question whether crickets changing their singing might not be explained by culture or learned behaviour — at least partly? As for lactase, is it such a vast leap from drinking mother's milk in infancy to drinking the milk of other mammals?

Comparing these examples to completely rewiring the human digestive system, insulin response mechanism, and immune system to deal with digesting and utilizing foods (refined sugars, grains) in vast quantities which we rarely if ever encountered before seems like something that might take a bit longer to evolve.

The argument almost seems to say "evolution has been observed on shorter timescales, therefore any evolutionary leap is possible on shorter timescales."

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#99

Post by nqureshi »

mekoka wrote: post #92

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 that wheat causes weight gain and health problems (independent of other variables), they'd be a good candidate for the next Nobel in Medicine.

Most studies I've read show that Paleo is no better or worse than a normal healthy diet. In some cases e.g. when you're an athlete, it'll be actively worse, since carbs are a basic source of fuel. [1]

On top of this, Paleo promotes some claims that are ridiculous, e.g. that burning fat for fuel == burning carbs for fuel. They have totally different consequences.

Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food. Loads of calories and not enough exercise means your body stores fat. That's sort of obvious, and nothing to do with any special properties that 'carbs' have.

Just eat plenty of vegetables (esp green / strongly coloured ones), and make sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure calories in Be extremely sceptical of anything claiming otherwise. I'm not sure why intelligent people can get so caught up in fads - such as Paleo - that are backed up by pseudo-science. 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?!).

You've got to have contrarian ideas to be really intelligent, but not all contrarianism is good.

[1] I say this as a semi-pro runner who has tried running on a Paleo diet and found it disastrous. You cannot burn fat with the same efficiency as you can 'burn' carbs (i.e. use glycogen). It doesn't work that way. 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.

Re: “Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions

#100

Post by cromulent »

mekoka wrote: post #92

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 have already passed their life-expectancy, there seems to be no data supporting whether it will work for my longevity ;)

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