Problems and Praise of the Paleo Diet

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What is the Paleo Diet?

The Paleo (or Paleolithic) Diet is supposed to mimic what our hunter-gatherer ancestors were supposed to have eaten. The premise for this diet is that modern day farming is the root of obesity and chronic illness in our world. Our ancestors didn't eat bacon every meal, or 30 eggs at breakfast because it was expensive and costly. You can read more about their diet in the book The Paleo Diet by Loren Cordain. The focus of this diet is that it is supposed to lower your chances of diabetes, lose weight, increase libido, and help you to live longer. All great things, right? Keep reading.

Praises for the Paleo Diet

This diet is pretty cool because it does encourage people to eat more vegetables because they saw a really ripped guy on ESPN who follows it. It encourages eating seafood (containing Omega-3s), grass-fed meat (which coincidentally is generally organic), fresh fruits and vegetables, eggs, nuts and seeds (healthy fats and minerals) and healthy oils (olive, flax, avocado, coconut).

Anything in my book that encourages, eggs, fresh produce, seeds, and healthy fats is a winner.

This diet has also demonstrated it's ability to help control autoimmune diseases (lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis, MS, Type 1 Diabetes, vasculitis, etc.) because it contains a lot of anti-inflammatory foods. Giving up processed grains (sugary cereals, cakes, and cookies) has a huge beneficial impact for people that suffer from these things.

Problems with the Paleo Diet

This diet cuts out all cereals, grains, legumes, vegetable oils, dairy, potatoes, sugars, processed foods, and salt. Is your favorite food on this list? Umm...no. But your favorite fruit and vegetables sure are!

First of all, the cereal and the beans get me. I love cereal, it just makes a place feel like home when you eat it, and second, legumes? Are you kidding me? Beans are the magical fruit. Packed with fiber, protein, these miracle legumes are amazing! You can make them taste like just about anything. So, the big problem here, is that you are missing a really good food group. Peanuts are a legume, so no peanut butter either. Our ancestors did in fact eat grains and legumes.

In the past thousand years, humans and our genetics have evolved as well. Why would we eat a diet prescribed for people who had difficulty digesting things we dont? And additionally, fruits and vegetables in the old world are completely different from our world. We have bred fruits and vegetables by selecting the best producing crops, and even genetically engineered some of out produce. It is highly unlikely that a group of hunter-gatherers could go into a grocery store today and recognize much of anything.

The next problem with the Paleo diet is that is has absolutely no dairy in it. For some people, getting enough calcium is already difficult. My husband is lactose-intolerant, so we don't eat a lot of dairy anyway, but the whole point of loading your bones with weight is to strengthen them, with calcium. I've brought this up to a lot of people who swear by this diet because they say they eat spinach, well, I'm here to tell you that the bioavailability of calcium (how easy it is to absorb) in spinach is poor. So bad in fact that while you can eat all the spinach you want, it really doesn't compare with the absorption of calcium from milk (it's that oxalic acid). (Spinach is good on it's own for other reasons...).

If you do a review of mummies (easy to study because everything is preserved) you will see that a lot of them had atheroschlerosis. And this is before the days of fast food, so if we were to go along with the Paleo diet idealizing the health of our ancestors this is a potential flaw.

The last problem I have with the Paleo Diet is that there are many "Paleo Diets". If you consider that our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived in all different regions of the world, and had access to different things, it quickly becomes common sense that their diets would vary greatly.

For example, we know that the Inuit people ate a diet high in fish and meats (and due to the extreme cold, it is unlikely they ate much tropical fruit and non-starchy vegetables.

Other groups of paleolithic dieters (think the !Kung people in South Africa) ate a diet very high in nuts and seeds, with a little bit of dairy. This group of people had a much higher percentage of fruits and vegetables in their diet given the climate, and accessibility of these things.

There is no ONE Paleo Diet.

Solution

Instead of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater, eat sensibly. Eat Clean, whole foods: fruit, veggies, meat, nuts, some dairy, some grains, and legumes.

What lifestyle approach do you have/have you used to eating? What made you feel the best and give you the best results?

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