This is a good vid to watch for those confused about the facts on supposed “Paleo” diets. Her main “lessons” toward the end are spot on and she does a great job of picking apart some of the realities of our modern diets (good and bad) vs supposed Paleo diets people think they are following which are based more on marketing than fact.
I have some issues with her comments regarding human physiology (she’s an archaeologist, not a human physiologist and it shows in some spots) and thought it was going to turn into a pro vegetarian lecture (It didn’t) but her essential take home lessons and info on the fact Paleo eating is more marketing and fad than fact, is good info:
People have changed their entire lives for the paleo/primal diets. The good news is it clears the way for my new chimpanzee diet book. That’s where you eat ants off a stick and ticks that you pick off your friends.
The idea of eating a diet more in-line with how we have eaten for thousands of years is a good one.
The “Paleo Diet” is kind of silly because you are still getting all your food in a supermarket! This is obviously something our ancestors did NOT do, so your already setting yourself up for failure. People who are on this paleo diet aren’t even eating wild food… (thats all our paleo ancestors ate!) Trying to eat primitively while utilizing a supermarket is going full retard.
So before you even get into how the “paleo diet” tells you not to eat grains or legumes ext (which primitive people did) we can see that this fad diet is a off based. It is silly to argue about the details of a diet, which starts off with a flawed premise.
Now I truly believe that the CLOSER you can get to the diet that we have evolved eating, the better off you are. But, the first step is honestly evaluating how paleo people ate.
If anyone is truly interested check out this video by my wild food mentor Arthur Haines. Its only 10 minutes long
Yes well, when ever you build an industry around a thing, the actual facts tend to get lost in the shuffle somewhere sadly. the term “Paleo Diet” is marketing nonsense at the end of the day. What she concludes at the end of her talk dead on and what’s been recommended by those who understand human nutrition and physiology and not just not trying to make $$$ off people: eat fresh foods when possible, eat a diversity of foods, eat whole foods.
That pretty much sums up her advice for those who want the cliff notes, and it’s 100% correct.*
= for most people most of the time with possible medical exceptions and or specific applications & populations.
That’s good for him, but the fact is, human society wold not exist without modern techniques used and wondering around the hills of ME for plants not going to feed people. I suspect you didn’t watch the vid I posted, but if gathering food from the hills and such makes you happy, all good to me. It’s not a realistic way to feed people however.
Watched the entire video and enjoyed it. I agree with what she said (except that wild carrots are not bitter). I did not mean that YOU did not know what a whole food was, or that you were wrong in any way. Just that a lot of people say “whole foods” with out realizing that most of the people they are talking to don’t know what that means. It is a term i used to use a lot before i realized that just because i knew what i meant didnt mean that everyone else did. If the person you are talking to knows what it means then chances are your already preaching to the choir.
Of course if all 7 billion people went feral, our ecology could no longer support that. I am not arguing that every human being should eat only wild food. But wild food is a great resource for your health if you live in an area where you have access to it. I am not talking about foraging for fiddleheads here. Deer, elk, small game, seafood, and freshwater fish are easy for many people to harvest and are in fact overpopulated in some areas.
Eating diverse, fresh and unprocessed food is 100x better than the average human diet, no argument there. I am only saying that eating a diverse, fresh, unprocessed diet rich in wild meat and vegetables is 101x better than the average human diet.
I don’t have time to watch the whole thing at the moment, but I’ll get to it later today.
That said, I’m a pretty good follower of the whole paleo/primal/ancestral thing.
What she concludes at the end of her talk dead on and what’s been recommended by those who understand human nutrition and physiology and not just not trying to make $$$ off people: eat fresh foods when possible, eat a diversity of foods, eat whole foods.
This is pretty much exactly what I think it’s all about, anyway. Sure, there are a few people who take it to the extreme and cut out things like coffee, wine, and other more modern things, but that’s not everyone.
Personally, I find that I feel and perform much better when I eat little to no grain based products. My wife and I buy almost all of our produce from the local farmers market, or we grow it ourselves on our patio sustenance garden, and we try and get meat that was raised and processed as cleanly as possible (grass fed, no steroids, etc).
We look at it as trying to eat foods that are as close as possible to the source, without going to phases of processing in a factory to preserve or fortify.
Adding to that, when you get deeper into the paleo thing, it’s more than just a diet. It becomes a lifestyle involving lots of low intensity exercise (walking, casual cycling, etc), better sleep patterns, social activities (in the real world, not facebook), and keeping stress as low as possible. It’s about better health, not just losing fat.
Following paleo or not, I believe this is a good healthy lifestyle that has paid dividends for us. Does it really matter how we arrived at it?
The problem arises when making generalizations there similar to the generic “paleo diet” which does not exist. There’s no such thing as “the average human diet” for the same reasons she points out there’s no real paleo diet due to locations, time of year, farming practices, etc, etc. Ergo, What people eat in China is quite different from what they eat in Panama, etc. which also varies by time of year, regional differences, cultural differences, etc.
However, if you meant the average US of A diet, well, it’s darn horrible and just getting people to eat an apple vs a Big Gulp would be a big improvement to be sure.
I have to admit, I don’t know what whole foods means. I really need to find myself a new diet plan. I like to eat most anything and actually like to cook but I’ve gotten to the age I can look at food and gain weight. I’ve also developed some really bad habits of impulse buying bad food like banana pudding or chocolate.
Tried a modified sushi binge a while back. Made some graflax from Costco salmon but even that is packed in sugar and salt… which I try to scrape off before actually eating it. But then you get the soy sauce and that’s more salt…
It pretty much seems like no matter which way I turn I’m making “bad food”.
Both of my parents have had/do have cancer, and eat out at Mcdonald’s or KFC almost every day. One of them is diabetic. I am constantly shocked about just how bad peoples diets are around me. As long as they aren’t eating candy- many americans think they are eating “pretty healthy.”
There’s no “bad foods” just foods you should limit or avoid as much as possible where possible. Dichotomous thinking and approach to it is what’s gotten so many people confused and turned off in the first place.
When people take things to the extreme, especially with food, it’s more OCD than useful behavior. Whole foods, think in terms of essentially any fruit that’s not been altered (peeled, canned, juiced, etc), essentially any vegetable that’s sitting there on the fresh vegetable table (vs canned, mushed, etc), and any lean meat (vs canned, blended, lunch meats, etc) and work from there.
Limit things like white pasta, breads, juice/soda, white rice, canned suff, fast foods, fried anything, breakfast cereals, lunch meats,.
It’s neither really possible, or needed, to eat a 100% of totally unprocessed foods, but sticking to those foods you know are GTG, and letting the more processed stuff in only when you can’t avoid it, is a good start.
Trick is to find the balance of healthy nutrition to get the results you want, without (a) driving yourself crazy (b) having no life worth living.
Ergo, as i was typing this I was eating a handful of dark chocolate chips (a “processed” food item with many known health benefits…), walnuts, and strong black coffee, and lived to tell the tail. :eek:
Also see free report I just put up with additional info on long term habits & eating that lead to long term weight loss:
She starts her argument by presenting the idea that the paleo diet is about eating exactly what our ancestors ate 30,000 years ago. Of course we all know this is not possible. I also got the impression that she believes that paleo is all about eating lots of meat at the expense of fruits and vegetables, which is wrong. I don’t think she debunked anything except her own straw-man view of what paleo is about. I also thought her point was weak when it came to grains and legumes. She said that she was going to debunk that myth, but then talked about paleo folks eating vegetables (which they did).
That said, I thought her discussion about how foods have changed as we cultivated them was a good one. But, to date, I have not read any paleo author advocating going out and finding wild broccoli and only eating that.
I think the whole “paleo” name is frankly just a marketing term to give people something to remember. Everything I’ve read is pretty much indistinguishable from something like the whole-30 plan or any other plan that advocates eating real food that comes from the ground and high quality meats, which is pretty much exactly where her conclusions lead. The underlying principal of it all is to get away from the processed junk that has invaded our cultural diet in the last 50 years and get back to eating good seasonal varieties of fruits and vegetables and cleanly raised animals (or hunting them yourself).
Whether that is called paleo, primal, whole-30, or just just good nutrition is pretty much irrelevant, IMO.
Not to those trying to market/sell “Paleo” diets… per my first post above, I essentially agree with your assessment: I think she got off to a bad start, but the majority of her info was solid and her take home dead on, and nothing but just good nutrition advice (eat fresh foods when possible, eat a diversity of foods, eat whole foods) as you said.
If people following “paleo” diets end of eating better, all good, but it also annoys me greatly that the sheep following it think it’s unique, different, or based on what their paleolithic ancestors ate, which is nonsense. On that score, I think she covered it well.
Love me some Ezekiel cereal mixed with eggs and oatmeal. I saw this video posted the other day by biolayne and sent it to my wife who was getting dangerously close to being sucked into the paleo vortex of no return.
The only thing I can say in the “Paleo” defense is it’s a generally healthy way to eat and the basic “lessons” OK, but as usual, people have converted it into a religion, and are overly dogmatic about some of it. There’s far worse diets out there, and some based on total BS written by complete con artists.
Fair point, there are a lot of people who think that eating real food is somehow unique to “paleo” (as opposed to something like the processed low-carb bread from the South Beach diet fad years back).
But what not a lot of people talk about is that “paleo” is about much more than just nutrition. If you read any of the books by Wolff, Sisson, Seib, or others, they all focus on the nutrition component as just a component of a larger lifestyle (and they don’t all agree on the “proper” nutrition). “Paleo” lifestyle focuses a lot on proper exercise (little/no steady state cardio, lots of low intensity movement like walking, routine heavy lifting and sprinting workouts), good sleep patterns (get up with the sun, go to bed when it gets dark), and other components.
You could easily argue that these are all things that everyone should be doing anyway, but calling it “paleo” is a marketing mind hack that lets people separate how they have been living their lives from this “new” method that helps them get healthier.
But, as you said, it doesn’t really matter what its called as long as its on the right path for better health and people can actually do it.
