Debunking The Paleo Diet (a paleontologist speaks)

#1

I found this presentation interesting. Key points were:

  1. There is no single paleo diet
  2. The diversity of historical paleo diets is extreme
  3. There is no modern food combination to mimic paleo eating
  4. Paleo metabolism is not comparible to modern metabolism
  5. Paleo food processing and consumption is not being mimicked by “the paleo diet”

Her first point of refutation was a little sloppy. I think it gets tighter after that, but there are a few straw men here and there. Still the central theme, that diets advertised as “Paleo” are labelled incorrectly holds strong for me.

I wish she had differentiated between the benefits of the diet and the historicity of the diet… but alas.

I’m interested in comments. I’m sure there’s lots to refute and discuss. Go!

#2

I haven’t watched this yet but I will when I get back later. Something I always think with any of these dietary systems though is that people tend to get way too militant and cliquey about them. Any and all of them (well the good ones!) really are simply a great starting point. It’s a way in and it doesn’t really matter what faddy nature is touted (as a lot are). If it catches your eye and gets you interested in changing your health then it is a brilliant thing to get you on the right track. I know a few people who used paleo as that way in and have radically overhauled their health as a result. Are they strictly paleo? What knows because it seems to be a debatable topic in the first place as to what it actually IS. One took it as the way in to try and stop the 2nd MS style attack that you need to be diagnosed. As yet she hasn’t had a 2nd attack so she is doing something right. Personally I would like to shake up a lot of what she eats towards a much more keto way but hey, no surprises there!

(Cathy) #3

I believe one of the main factors that make people healthier doing ‘paleo’ is the elimination of grains. I believe it can have a massive effect on many people’s health.

(eat more) #4

for sure!
i have a friend that was suffering…flakey, itchy, pusey skin…he looked purple, had to wear gloves all of the time, was affecting his eyesight, joint and muscle pain…for at least a year with no relief or medical diagnosis

he eliminated grains, dairy, and sugar…it’s only been about 3 weeks and he looks amazing…it only took about a week to see improvement

very happy for him!

#5

I found paleo first (although I kept dairy) before I found keto. That got me cutting out grains, sugar, and processed foods. I felt better. That was a good start for ultimately moving into the direction of going full keto.

I heard people being critical of paleo all the time. I ignored all that. It didn’t matter to me if cavemen didn’t eat desserts made with almond flour and stevia. It was working for me and reduced inflammation because of avoiding grains. I don’t really understand the criticism. It’s not like I’d have been better off with the standard American diet. It wasn’t as good as keto for me, but for a person who doesn’t have insulin resistance, it’s certainly infinitely better than how most people eat.

(John) #6

I’m not at all a fan of Paleo for a lot of reasons she mentions, but this whole presentation was a strawman tied together with other dumbed down over-simplistic examples and fallacies.

Is today’s source of food anything akin to what paleolithic man ate? No, which is part of my main argument against it, but more than that is the militant attitude to something that is quite obviously not really what they ate anyway. As a diet, it is a lot closer to what paleolithic man ate than the SAD.

Edit: Let me add that I see this as purely an attack for the sake of being at the talk, it would have been really cool for her to share some of the knowledge she is supposed to have. For example instead of trying to ridicule people for trying to eat a certain way, why not show examples of what they did eat that is not available today and what a close approximation might be. When I see somebody doing something wrong in my field I don’t make fun of them and say hey everybody look at this guy messing stuff up! which helps nobody other than maybe my ego. I offer to help fill in the knowledge gaps so they can do better in the future and everybody is the better for it.

(Murray Stromberg) #7

Here is a link to the blog Paleo Style (by Miki Ben-Dor) with an interesting “debunking” of the “Debunking the Paleo Diet” - http://www.paleostyle.com/?p=2143

#8

Yeah, I would have enjoyed that also. The sugar cane bit of her presentation was heading in the right direction.

(Michael Wallace Ellwood) #9

I always found the concept of “Paleo” dubious in the extreme, and mostly ignored it.
LCHF was good enough for me, until I discovered the explicitly keto variation of LCHF.

I am sympathetic to the concept that we should aim to eat something like the diet that we probably evolved to eat, and therefore most foods obviously processed beyond any possible recognition of what our ancestors could have known are probably out.

But I think it’s mostly a question of common sense, and not attempting to get too purist about what might or might not be “paleo”. In most cases, we simply don’t know.

(Tom) #10

I saw this ages ago. One of the papers she cites for evidence of grain processing is frankly incorrect. The paper (I think it was on findings at the Qesem cave) distinctly states that the grindstone were found to be used for root-based starches, yet she states it was evidence of grains. Two things: 1)she’s a PhD but is either lying or gloriously inept, and 2) even if they were managing to grind a few measly kernels of paleolithic grasses, that does not validate today’s widespread industrial farming and consumption of cubic fracktons of flour.

#11

I know this is old, but as someone who has read a lot of from the main Paleo folks - Robb Wolf, Chris Kresser, Mark Sisson - I found this TED talk incredibly irritating when I saw it a few years ago.
Anyone who researches this seriously would know that (of course!) there’s no one Paleo diet. She presented that as if it were some kind of new information. The wide variation in successful indigenous diets is so built into the whole framework of any ancestral WOE that you’d have to really not know anything about Paleo to miss it. This woman clearly had no idea what she was talking about (not in terms of her own area of expertise but in terms of what’s actually out there as the Paleo diet). I remember her showing plates of bacon piled on ham piled on steak or something similar - a meal that would look odd even to the most ketogenic paleo folks (it wouldn’t make us wince, probably! but it’s not what we’re sitting down to eat for 3 meals/day). Talk about straw men…

Also - that modern pigs are different from feral pigs, or that modern broccoli is different from wild greens (well, duh…) and somehow using that to conclude that grains could just as easily be a natural and healthy part of our diet - and then with that amused tone as if she were revealing something that the cavemen followers were too dopey to figure out - argh!

This talked bugged me a bit, obviously :confounded:

(Siobhan) #12

Paleo is obviously not accurate but it does help people cut out grain and added sugar (although some add coconut sugar and honey back in…) for a lot of people its a step in the right direction so I dont comment.

I do whince when diabetics go paleo then eat dates or coconut sugar though.
Grain needs to go die in a fire it has been a part of our diets for a relatively short time and it has done a lot of damage.

#13

Accuracy is only an issue if someone interprets Paleo as some kind of historical re-enactment. For the the leaders in the community, and overwhelming majority of folks who eat Paleo, trying to exactly imitate some mythical Paleolithic diet would be absurd. Paleo eating/movement is about using evolutionary biology as a starting point to figure out what works best for us (for us as humans, and for us as individuals) regarding food, movement, sleep, exposure to light, community, etc.

(Mary Ann) #14

I saw this awhile ago. One thing I took away from it (that I didn’t realize at the time) was that our vegetables today do not resemble the vegetables available in the paleo era. Humans were not eating vegetables at the amount / abundance we’ve been told to eat them now. I thought this was fishy at the time. Now that I’ve researched ZC more it just clicked-- yea there’s no way we would have survived on the ‘just eat plants’ concept. One other point already mentioned by @acrunchyfrog – the grains premise presumes an industrialization and distribution of grains that doesn’t seem possible.

(Todd Allen) #15

I think there is value in considering our ancestral diets while making our modern food choices. But if you search for paleo foods in google or amazon you find an endless variety of paleo candy bars and other highly processed convenience foods. The increasing mainstreaming of the paleo diet making it ever more accessible to our hungry on the go snacking culture makes “paleo” seem like a cruel joke.

Unfortunately keto is taking baby steps in the same direction and I expect the more popular keto becomes the easier it will be to eat highly processed unhealthy keto foods.

(Mary Ann) #16

I agree. It seems like a slippery slope ending with franken-foods.