PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger,

Your posts are like a shotgun blast . . . and just as dangerous :eek:

In support of your agenda, you throw out innumerable points, most of which are not relevant or argue against positions that I have not taken. Unfortunately, the sheer volume of facts your present will be mistaken as wisdom by some of those not well versed in the subject of nutrition.

It is clear that this discussion will be endless . . . because of the complexity of the subject matter and the nature of how you deal with it. This will be the last time I respond. Hopefully, those paying attention will understand what's going on.

You must consider that in Price's time, there was no such diagnosis, as it was first described only 50 years ago. Even in my early radiology training, it was treated as a rare pediatric disease. Now with better diagnostic techniques, we know it is much more common and affects adults as well.

True, celiac disease appears more prevalent now. But is that because of better diagnostic techniques, or because sugar and refined grain consumption have skyrocketed resulting in worse overall health? There have been no studies on celiac disease incidence in pre-industrial grain-eating peoples. You claim it existed, but have no proof . . . yet I doubt that lack of evidence will sway your opinion . . .

Celaic disease causes weight loss via malabsorption - the villous epithelium of the gut is destroyed. I believe there are many patients told they have irritable bowel syndrome, who in fact have forme fruste celiac. Perversely, they often are advised to increase their grain consumption so they can get more "fiber". You can imagine the effect this has.

You got me there, Roger.
I have to confess that weight loss is something that is plaguing America. Why, just look at all the emaciated people walking down the streets of the U.S. :rolleyes:

Celiac is caused by gliadin proteins in the seed that are heat stable and not destroyed by cooking. It is 100% curable by complete abstention from grain consumption.

Everybody . . . except you . . . eats grains. So why is the incidence of celiac disease only 1 in 300 ? Obviously, grains are not as toxic as you suggest.

The presence of celiac disease (100% related to wheat) is linked to the risk of many other autoimmune diseases as well:

Insulin dependent Diabetes Mellitus (Type I DM) -Type II is more related to sugars and refined grains - this is type I, where little children have to inject themselves to avoid death.

Sjogren syndrome - a serious and uncomfortable autoimmune disorder affecting the salivary glands - 10x more common in those with celiac.

Rheumatoid arthritis - serious, painful autoimmune disease

IGA nephropathy

Multiple Sclerosis - debilitating neurological degenerative disease, Here there are several putative agents in thediet, including wheat

Schizophrenia - 30 times higher prevalence in those with celiac disease.

peripheral neuropathies

epilepsy

Nobody ever said celiac disease was fun . . . .

The cure for this disease, however, is not to avoid grains forever, but to avoid them temporarily while eating an otherwise traditional diet that avoids sugar and refined carbohydrates. (Rice may be tolerated.)
Once intestinal health is recovered, grains can be safely eaten again.

(In Iran there is a region where 3% of military recruits are rejected due to hypogonadal dwarfism - zinc deficiency due to 50% of calories from unleavened bread (tanok) is the culprit. The biovavailability of zinc in grains is compromised by phytic acid binding the zinc.

That explains a lot :rolleyes:

But seriously, how do you explain why the rest of the grain-eating world does not suffer hypogonadal dwarfism? Obviously, something else is going on.

You make statements such as these, without apparently giving much thought to what you are saying . . . .

India -VIt B12 deficiencies are common. B12 is only obtained from animal products.

This is a reason not to eat grain?
Am I suggesting the avoidance of animal foods?

You just spew out the facts, regardless of their relevance to the topic under discussion.

Beri Beri -Excessive white rice consumption in Japan before artificial fortification in the late 1800s - thiamin deficiency.

There you go again . . . with the shotgun blast of facts. :rolleyes:

Who is suggesting eating refined grains? Not me.

Pellagra - Excess corn consumption in the southern US in early 1900s. 3 million cases- 100,000 deaths.

Pellagra, a niacin deficiency, is not caused by "excess corn consumption". It is caused by failing to add lime to the corn -- as was done traditionally by the American and Southeastern Indians -- in order to release its niacin.
If you would stop to think a minute, you would ask yourself why pellagra wasn't endemic among these populations.

Least you say, "Having to add niacin to corn proves that grains are toxic," let me ask whether you add salt to your animal foods, or cook your food? Even many animals add salt to their diets through salt licks. So adding something to "improve" a food is not, per se, an argument against a particular food.
Also, corn is the only grain that requires the addition of lime, so damning all grains because of a requirement for corn is specious.

Shall we emulate the wisdom of these traditional diets that were apparently not burdened by sugar and white flour?

Worldwide over 2 billion are iron deficient and 1 billion of these people are suffering from iron deficiency anemia - leading to weakness, increased infections, and elevated infant and maternal mortality. This simply cannot occur with an "unbalanced" diet of animal products and vegetables, it is solely due to the presence of too much grain in the diet. The bioavailability of iron in cereal grains is very poor.

Sigh . . . .

Did you pause to ask yourself why the grain-eaters in America and Europe are not suffering from iron deficiency and anemia like those of poorer countries?

Am I recommended a diet of "too much grain"?

The reason for these diseases is not because the people eat grain, it's because they are so poor they do not eat enough animal food and therefore do not have a balanced diet.

You will die or suffer severe nutritional deficiency if you only eat grains and nothing else. No vit A, C or B12. I'll cover these in more detail in my upcoming post.

Again, who is recommending to "only eat grains and nothing else"?

You make ridiculous statements, then use them to substantiate your position.

If you never touch a cereal grain (E.g Inuit), you can live quite well.

Are you sure?

The typical Inuit diet is high in protein and very high in fat - in their traditional diets, Inuit consumed an average of 75% of their daily energy intake from fat.^[13] While it is not possible to cultivate plants for food in the Arctic, gathering those that are naturally available has always been typical. Grasses, tubers, roots, stems, berries, and seaweed (kuanniq or edible seaweed) were collected and preserved depending on the season and the location.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit

While this article says "grasses" -- and grains are the seeds of grasses -- it does not specifically say that the seeds were eaten. However, since seeds were eaten by other pre-industrial people before agriculture, I think we can assume that the Inuits do likewise.

There are no essential carbohydrates.

There is no micronutrient in grains you cannot get with higher bioavailabilty elsewhere.

We've been over this . . . .

Raja, I know you will not be persuaded, but for the benefit of other readers, I need to set the record straight on what is known about grains and health.

I think I am the one who is setting the record straight

What do grains offer (other than calories and antinutrients) that we cannot get elsewhere?

Been over this already . . . .

I would also protest the continued assumption, without much evidence, that the poorer, simpler and less sophisticated the population, the more nutritional wisdom is to be found.

Who is "poorer, simpler and less sophisticated" than the paleolithics? Yet, you espouse paleolithic nutrition :rolleyes:

That is where Ancel Keyes and our Goverment went wrong, they went looking for fat as the culprit and found only what they were looking for, but now we know they were probably wrong. In the meantime and with the best of intentions, they have probably killed more than Pol Pot by telling us all to substitute carbohydrates for saturated fat.

No . . . where they went wrong is that Dr. Keyes was out to promote his own career, so he conveniently ignored the fact that his own research showed two groups -- the Mexican and French -- were eating high-fat diets yet did not have a high incidence of heart disease.
Another case of self-serving people in positions of authority who, I agree, probably "killed more than Pol Pot". The lesson is not that grains are bad, but that doctors who gain the public trust by spewing out erroneous scientific information can be very, very dangerous.

And on that note, I think I'll end it.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Don't know of any animals that photosynthesis.

Right you are. Guess I'd better up the brain food nutrients in my diet :rolleyes:.

Thanks.

[Digidiver]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Don't know of any animals that photosynthesis.

A great link about it though: http://www.naturalways.com/spirul1.htm

Spirulina is one of the few plant sources of vitamin B12, usually found only in animal tissues. A teaspoon of Spirulina supplies 21/2 times the Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamin B12 and contains over twice the amount of this vitamin found in an equivalent serving of liver.
Spirulina also provides high concentrations of many other nutrients - amino acids, chelated minerals, pigmentations, rhamnose sugars (complex natural plant sugars), trace elements, enzymes - that are in an easily assimilable form.
Even though it is single-celled, Spirulina is relatively large, attaining sizes of 0.5 millimeters in length. This is about 100 times the size of most other algae, which makes some individual Spirulina cells visible to the naked eye. Furthermore, the prolific reproductive capacity of the cells and their proclivity to adhere in colonies makes Spirulina a large and easily gathered plant mass.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

As a vegetarian I take spirulina daily and it has plenty of protein and B12.

I thought spirulina was an animal (a one cell algae bacterium) not a vegetable :confused:.

[Digidiver]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

India It B12 deficiencies are common. B12 is only obtained from animal products.
As a vegetarian I take spirulina daily and it has plenty of protein and B12.

`d`

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger says grains are toxic, yet, as you point out, people all over the world have eaten grains without suffering from diabetes and celiac disease. There is a disconnect there . . . .

You must consider that in Price's time, there was no such diagnosis, as it was first described only 50 years ago. Even in my early radiology training, it was treated as a rare pediatric disease. Now with better diagnostic techniques, we know it is much more common and affects adults as well.

Celaic disease causes weight loss via malabsorption - the villous epithelium of the gut is destroyed. I believe there are many patients told they have irritable bowel syndrome, who in fact have forme fruste celiac. Perversely, they often are advised to increase their grain consumption so they can get more "fiber". You can imagine the effect this has.

There is always a disconnect, cognitive dissonance even, when considering what you have been taught might be wrong. I used to think whole wheat bread was the staff of life, too

There is lots of celiac disease and very high prevalence of gliadin antibodies on a gradient running from the near east to northern europe. Estimates of prevalence in europe is 1/300 and in the united states 1/250.

Celiac is caused by gliadin proteins in the seed that are heat stable and not destroyed by cooking. It is 100% curable by complete abstention from grain consumption.

The presence of celiac disease (100% related to wheat) is linked to the risk of many other autoimmune diseases as well:

Insulin dependent Diabetes Mellitus (Type I DM) -Type II is more related to sugars and refined grains - this is type I, where little children have to inject themselves to avoid death.

Sjogren syndrome - a serious and uncomfortable autoimmune disorder affecting the salivary glands - 10x more common in those with celiac.

Rheumatoid arthritis - serious, painful autoimmune disease

IGA nephropathy

Multiple Sclerosis - debilitating neurological degenerative disease, Here there are several putative agents in thediet, including wheat

Schizophrenia - 30 times higher prevalence in those with celiac disease.

peripheral neuropathies

epilepsy

Grains are dangerous if your ancestors are from northern europe.

It is safer to eat grains if you are of genetic stock from the fertile crescent, but still not very safe.

(In Iran there is a region where 3% of military recruits are rejected due to hypogonadal dwarfism - zinc deficiency due to 50% of calories from unleavened bread (tanok) is the culprit. The biovavailability of zinc in grains is compromised by phytic acid binding the zinc.

India -VIt B12 deficiencies are common. B12 is only obtained from animal products.

Beri Beri -Excessive white rice consumption in Japan before artificial fortification in the late 1800s - thiamin deficiency.

Pellagra - Excess corn consumption in the southern US in early 1900s. 3 million cases- 100,000 deaths.

Shall we emulate the wisdom of these traditional diets that were apparently not burdened by sugar and white flour?

Worldwide over 2 billion are iron deficient and 1 billion of these people are suffering from iron deficiency anemia - leading to weakness, increased infections, and elevated infant and maternal mortality. This simply cannot occur with an "unbalanced" diet of animal products and vegetables, it is solely due to the presence of too much grain in the diet. The bioavailability of iron in cereal grains is very poor.

Good health is seen despite grain consumption, not because of it.

You will die or suffer severe nutritional deficiency if you only eat grains and nothing else. No vit A, C or B12. I'll cover these in more detail in my upcoming post.

If you never touch a cereal grain (E.g Inuit), you can live quite well.

There are no essential carbohydrates.

There is no micronutrient in grains you cannot get with higher bioavailabilty elsewhere.

Raja, I know you will not be persuaded, but for the benefit of other readers, I need to set the record straight on what is known about grains and health.

Again I will turn theargument back on the grain defenders.

What do grains offer (other than calories and antinutrients) that we cannot get elsewhere?

I would also protest the continued assumption, without much evidence, that the poorer, simpler and less sophisticated the population, the more nutritional wisdom is to be found. That is where Ancel Keyes and our Goverment went wrong, they went looking for fat as the culprit and found only what they were looking for, but now we know they were probably wrong. In the meantime and with the best of intentions, they have probably killed more than Pol Pot by telling us all to substitute carbohydrates for saturated fat.

This, combined with the western emphasis on diseases of affluence only (we dumb, fat americans with our heart attacks) over nutritional deficiencies or autoimmune disorders that are invisible if you do not even know what they are - is its own form of limiting cultural myopia.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Yes, RM acknowledges that eliminating sugar has the biggest benefit.

Another thing I'll add is that you need to cut out artificial sweeteners too, even more so than sugar, IMO. Ideally eliminate both. Sweeteners keep your tongue and brain craving sugar because there's no sugar payoff in the stomach & bloodstream. They also desensitize your tongue to the natural sugars in vegetables and fruits, making them less appealing. I know ladies who put 6 Sweet-n-Lows in a cup of coffee because they are on a "diet".

Jimmy

You may be aware of the observational study reported a few years ago - it reported that consumption of diet soda seems to independently correlate with the risk of metabolic syndrome (high blood sugar and insulin levels).

Now, there are a few ways this could occur;

1) Although they "control" for other factors like sugar consumption and calories, in any observational study, factoring out other variables is always mathematically supported guesswork. There may always be covariance with unknown risk factors that are inadequately accounted for or measured.

2) Artificial sweeteners, I believe, condition you to crave sweets. I have only personal and anecdotal clinical experience to support this, but it seems reasonable. I notice if during a long fast I drink diet soda, I get hungry about 15 minutes later every time.

3) There is some evidence there may be a physiologically significant insulin response with artificial sweeteners just due to the sweet taste- even if small, the corresponding drop in blood glucose may be exagerrated by the fact no glucose is consumed - when blood glucose drops, other hormones rise in response, stimulating your appetite. Of course insulin itself drives fat storage and decreases insulin sensitivity, so there may be direct unhealthy effects as well.

4) When it comes to artificial substances like aspartame, that we have even less experience consuming than the cereal grains I am leery of, the precautionary principle would dictate avoiding these substances.

As important as sucrose and HFCS avoidance? Probably not, but I don't recommend any artificial sweeteners.

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Roger says grains are toxic, yet, as you point out, people all over the world have eaten grains without suffering from diabetes and celiac disease. There is a disconnect there . . . .

The main disconnect is the issue of refined grains. The grains that most people in the world eat now and have eaten in the past are not refined. When they are refined, most micronutrients are removed in the process, to improve shelf life. In addition, the refined products cause spikes in insulin levels that are much higher than when they are unrefined. There is plenty of good research to show that high insulin levels are unhealthy.

However, saying that some population ate this-or-that food and didn't suffer ill effects is a pretty weak argument. Who knows what else they ate, what their genetics were like, how much exercise they were getting, what their overall nutritional status was, etc, etc. For example, the absence of certain micronutrients (such as zinc, selenium, molybdenum, etc), can cause a whole host of problems. Issues related to detoxification of the natural toxins in food is one of the first things to suffer.

In fact, I'm still not sure I understand the nature of your disagreement. Are you disagreeing with the ideas about insulin? That refined grains are unhealthy? Or is it the possibility that all grain might be unhealthy, and is therefore best avoided if you're trying to optimize your health?

BTW, the same is true for potatoes, which have also been eaten by humans for ages. Being in the nightshades family, they contain nicotine, as do their cousins tobacco, eggplant and capsicum. Does the fact that they've been eaten for ages mean that the toxin they contain doesn't have a negative effect in some populations?

[jimmygu3]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Were Cavemen really that healthy that we want to copy their diet?

Actually, some of the best advice is to cut out the sugar. They put that crap in EVERYTHING now days.

Yes, RM acknowledges that eliminating sugar has the biggest benefit.

Another thing I'll add is that you need to cut out artificial sweeteners too, even more so than sugar, IMO. Ideally eliminate both. Sweeteners keep your tongue and brain craving sugar because there's no sugar payoff in the stomach & bloodstream. They also desensitize your tongue to the natural sugars in vegetables and fruits, making them less appealing. I know ladies who put 6 Sweet-n-Lows in a cup of coffee because they are on a "diet".

Jimmy

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition.

Look at all of what people actually ate FOR 500 YEARS to get a more well averaged global verdict on the toxicity of grains - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" links so irrevocably with the grains. I know for a fact that many segments of the Meditteranean nations peasantry subsisted on far more grain and vegetable fats in the past 2-3 centuries than meat, for the simple reason that they were dirt poor and meat was never as cheap as these other foods. Maintain some appropriate skepticism about employing *any* definitive assertions as to *actual* food class ratios consumed by ancestors 20,000-50,000 years ago.

I'm in complete agreement, Lukester.

Unlike the science of basic chemistry, which is relatively simple, human nutrition is vastly complex. However, believing that they understand it, diet gurus promulgate hundreds of "diets" claiming their own version to be the healthiest.

I bypass all the nutritional complexities by eating a traditional diet, assuming that through trial and error over thousands of years, these cultures generally evolved a way of eating what works.

Roger says grains are toxic, yet, as you point out, people all over the world have eaten grains without suffering from diabetes and celiac disease. There is a disconnect there . . . .

[flintlock]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Were Cavemen really that healthy that we want to copy their diet?

Actually, some of the best advice is to cut out the sugar. They put that crap in EVERYTHING now days.

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Trying to put Rogermexico and his hopped up, gas-pedal-to-the-floor eat-more-meat-fats and "grains = death" thesis to bed. It needs to take a meditative sabbatical - spend some quality time with the world's various "indigenous tribes" to peer more closely into the anomaly - that they have eaten grains, and humble pulses, from the humble lentil to the notionally toxically "glycemic" bean, along with their "glycemic" starches - all for hundreds of years - and on this sickly a diet of vegetable proteins and grain carbohydrates, managed to remain the labor backbones of their respective nations.

Too many iTulipers offering unqualified accolades to the soaringly ambitious (Pa-Nu wants to lop one third of the world's food staples off the menu), culturally parochial, "Paleo-Nutrition" theme - while it sits in a high chair pronouncing half the world's population "wrong" for having stupidly confounded a poison for food, for the past 500 years. Sally forth, and examine the armies of sickly, anemic and ailing grain-eating peasantry all over the world then. We remain absolutely stumped as to how they can perform all that hard work while decimated by celiac disease and runaway hyperglycemia.

In fact, they should more properly have been reduced (by our Pa-Nu theory) to tottering deathly-ill wraiths by now instead.

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition. Maybe the previous 50 generations were not entirely asleep at the wheel when they formulated the world's various food sustenances for their own survival.

These are Rogermexico's blind spots - Looking around the world, it should be observable that for plenty of these cultures, grain rich diets have historically evidenced (not in peer reviewed past 30 years sample groups) societies remarkably free of the celiac / diabetic / hyperglycemic ailments which he ascribes to the grains. This broad basket of societies, where common people were to all appearances hardy, while on diets including plenty of grains given the unaffordability of meat - seems curiously overlooked in the general enthusiasm for "bringing scientific method to bear" on why modern Americans are exploding into hyperglycemia in response to all the grain and sugar products we consume.

Faced with a slightly anarchic distribution of dietary clues from the world's patchwork of many cultures and tangled dietary suggestions, Roger seems to prefer a thesis bound up with "elegant completeness" where groups of food which have been broadly consumed by great consensus for centuries achieve their final "adjudication" based upon an American nutritionist's study of the matter. Finding consensus for such a radical departure from past tradition (grains kill health) then arguably becomes more easily achieved in "peer reviewed papers", than when trying to peel that consensus out of the long and very contradictory patchwork *living record* of what the world has actually eaten for the past 500 years without evidencing a lot of sickly and weakened grain eaters.

Meanwhile, we can only wonder if the many silent now departed food eaters in our world history, following their "untutored native intuition", managed to demonstrate any evolutionary progress in the balance of things they chose to eat. To overturn all their collective untutored wisdom about grains being OK, in the space of a couple of years of study of the matter, implies they were not making any evolutionary progress on their food choices for 500 years, else they might be well along by now, and not require enlightenment from the Paleo Nutrition discovery. I still think Roger's first book should be a cookbook compiling wholesome foods of the world. That would provide a wonderful springboard for the second more theoretical foray into banishing all the grains.

In order to achieve a completely concluded elegant thesis here then, Paleo Nutrition seems to require some "nonconfirmatory corrolaries" to be summarily jettisoned. This in effect means entire nations grain rich dietary habits spanning centuries - **especally the rural poor populations** in these countries, who by definition are less able to afford meat regularly, have paradoxically exhibited robust good health and freedom from our ubiquitous industrialised nation diseases with plenty of grains in their mix for centuries, gets re-labeled as "flawed sampling methodology" or "ambiguous conclusions" (or merely flatly ignored) and is one way or another, made to simply "go away". These nation's long dietary histories, including a liberal allotment of grains in their diets, exhibit no rampant celiac disease. No rampant diabetes.

In fact, many of these in their rural populations exhibit vanishingly small incidence of such diseases, by any modern metric, but their input is contradictory to the thesis and simply does not get included as "real elapsed empirical data". The simple fact of their presence across hundreds of years of history leaves the Rogermexico's of this world stunningly unimpressed.

To suggest then that their net health profiles "don't necessarily outstrip the Paleo Diet" is taking the exasperation a step further, as the Paleo Diet has not yet been rolled out a societal scale anywhere and practiced for 100 or 500 years to provide any current real-world data set. Meanwhile, we are here proceeding (most appealing to the doctors among us apparently), to discuss the merits of recent doctors turned nutritionists forays into the "study of nutrition", in confident obliviousness to the point that real insights into the health or toxicity of grain and carb based diets exist far more convincingly within their extant world populations, than in "peer reviewed papers" heavily involved in polemically parsing human biology.

IMO if this (systematically collecting existing diets and then tracking their health results in those populations historically) was a primary focus of Price's work, then he exhibits more common sense, historically respectful caution, and general agnosticism in the selection of his datasets than does Rogermexico's Taubes, who arrives at the conclusion that entire swathes of world societies in their consecutive generational wisdom were simply *wrong* to include grains as a viable component of a balanced diet.

Point being - here we have these wonderful "definitive test groups" scattered out there all over the world, whose rural populations exhibit enviably good health profiles along with their grains consumption, - and this stunningly simple fact seems to blur collectively into these sort of large, pooled blind spots for this plethora of MD-turned-nutritionist American commentators. Whenever I see an American MD devising elegantly exclusionary theories - particularly when they enlist the *presumed* dietary habits of men who walked 20,000 years ago, at the expense of the carefully logged dietary history of the past 500 years of perfectly healthy specimens - I conclude (in my untutored supidity) that I am contending with "American MD's cultural myopia syndrome" - wherein food is a science before it ever is a distilled and nutritionally wise existing cultural artifact .

At the core of this conceit, is the assumption that when studying really wisely balanced nutrition, one does not need to anchor one's theories on what peoples in the world manifestly do eat to exhibit superb health - when those case histories run flatly contrary to one's developing thesis.

For these self appointed (thriving cottage industry of) medically trained nutritional scholars, there is merely puzzlement, vexation or flat out disinterest, that these existing groups, and their diets provide the simplest and most reliable real world endorsement of what constitutes a balanced and healthy nutrition. In investing we all readily understand the principle of "don't tell the market what to do - ask it rather what it will do" - yet in nutrition, Roger does not wish to appreciate the value of "don't tell the world's populations what constitutes healthy nutrition - ask them rather what they have actually eaten, that has provided healthy populations for centuries.

Roger takes the opposite view - that the question of whether 1/5 or 1/3 of the earth's population has been munching on a toxin for five hundred years with the collective cultural and nutritional intelligence of an army of cows, has already "been clearly adjudicated by the (contemporary state of the art) "science" to the contrary. His view to this reader, seems a bit mired in a close up preoccupation with the illnesses which have sprung up due to America's industrially administered nutrition.

I would suggest, that Roger's work needs to grasp a firm hold of the long history of healthy people evidenced in countries rich in grain eating history (not short sampling period contemporary or modern era "peer reviewed case studies") and regroup all of his assumptions - shelving them thoroughly long enough to conduct a really impartial investigation into WHY grain rich diets the world over have produced many generations of peoples with none of the Celiac / Diabetic illnesses he cites as irrevocably linked" to this class of foods. In short, the world cookbook spanning 200 years and it's consequences, is a grounding task to be undertaken before the Paleo diet book.

Meanwhile, instead of a straight reckoning of whatever we can glean of the disease level in many grain-eating peoples worldwide in the past 200 years, we get conjectures that sound more like this :

"You can decrease the frequency of meals to spend lots of time in ketosis with low serum glucose and insulin levels even though when you do eat the carb fraction is high. Intermittent fasting is very effective, but very, very difficult to do if you eat high carb and you and your mitochondria are not conditioned to ketosis. When I fast (easily up to 24 hours), I am not hungry, period."

and

"A low-fat or semi-starvation diet (1600 vs 2200 calories) can definitely lower your insulin levels and glucose levels as long as you are in calorie deficit, but not as effectively or safely as a high fat diet, IMO. No question you can get closer to paleo insulin and glucose levels on 1600 cal/day than with the SAD. ..."

The fasting recommendation seems wise enough - but then fasting has been an integral part of Indian nutrition theory for what, a thousand years? That alone does not seem enough to write a macro-thesis changing book about nutrition today. And the very modest food-consumption Japanese would likely look at this enthusiasm a little blankly as well.

All sounds a bit culturally self absorbed to this reader - as an alternate and serviceable methodology, we could just sally forth pragmatically to collect the dietary habits of a dozen nations spanning 200 years, and then take a simple note of their incidence of Celiac Disease and Diabetes. It appears to have been in many of these countries peasantries low to nonexistent, despite grains consumption. Oops. You wrote: "Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there". I don't know how many takers you've got for this observation on these pages, as my impression is that we have many readers here thoroughly in thrall to the "American doctor reliably reveals wise nutrition to us" meme - but for my penny, your observation is the pithiest one on this entire thread.

Look to what people the world over actually HAVE eaten FOR 500 YEARS, to find the anchor point of any dietary thesis - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" associates with the grains - and take care to do that by combing the world's dietary traditions for *contradictory* themes, and across *real* spans of time rather than just the past 30 years (in peer reviewed studies), along with some hypothetical food consumption by hoary ancestors back 20,000-50,000 years ago. The robust, anchored methodology would choose to work back from the past 500 years evidence of healthful peoples consuming grains at will. Roger does it the other way around, leaping over the heads of the past 500 years of apparently perfectly healthy grain eating humans to enlist the Paleolithic instead.

Goodness gracious, Lukester, you're gonna bust a gasket.

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Raja -

Apologies for the long comment. Here are some common sense observations and caveats for the Rogermexico's of this world.

Kudos to you for the broadly inclusive (eclectic) positions you take on what can be part of good diet and nutrition. I do feel more affinity towards your more "inclusive" view on what can be viable nutrition. Maybe the previous 50 generations were not entirely asleep at the wheel when they formulated the world's various food sustenances for their own survival.

These are Rogermexico's blind spots - Looking around the world, it should be observable that for plenty of these cultures, grain rich diets have historically evidenced (not in peer reviewed past 30 years sample groups) societies remarkably free of the celiac / diabetic / hyperglycemic ailments which he ascribes to the grains. This broad basket of societies, where common people were to all appearances hardy, while on diets including plenty of grains given the unaffordability of meat - seems curiously overlooked in the general enthusiasm for "bringing scientific method to bear" on why modern Americans are exploding into hyperglycemia in response to all the grain and sugar products we consume.

Faced with the many dietary traditions from around the world - and as there clearly are examples of grain rich diets which until recently have not evidenced any of the hyperglycemic consequences Roger links to this food, Roger seems to prefer an exclusionary theory, perhaps to make the thesis more elegantly validated, so an entire class of food which has been broadly consumed for centuries with a remarkably display of consensus across many dozens of societies around the world, only meets it's final definitive "adjudication" based upon an American nutritionist's study of the matter, over the space of a couple of years in the early 21st century.

Finding consensus for such a radical departure from the past consensus (that grains don't in fact destroy health) then seems more easily achieved by falling back on "peer reviewed papers", than by trying to peel that consensus out of the very contradictory and patchwork *living record* of what the world has actually eaten for the past 500 years. Because by and large, all of these grain consuming nations never did evidence a lot of sickly and weakened grain eaters spanning the past couple of centuries.

I still think Roger's first book should be a cookbook compiling wholesome foods of the world. That would provide a wonderful springboard for the second more theoretical foray into banishing all the grains.

In order to achieve a tightly wrapped thesis here, Paleo Nutrition seems to require some "nonconfirmatory instances" to be swept aside. That gets a little creaky to the thesis, as entire nations dietary histories, spanning centuries - **especally the rural poor populations who were less able to afford meat regularly** - paradoxically exhibited robust good health and freedom from industrialised world diseases, These don't appear to get much scrutiny in mitigation of the "grains are poison and kill people" thesis. They seem instead to get re-labeled "flawed sampling methodology" or "ambiguous conclusion", or just ignored, if it's a busy day at the office.

Meanwhile, that they actually in broad terms exhibited no rampant celiac disease, or diabetes, is a factum that just sort of sits on the table, looking awkward. In fact, many of these in their rural populations exhibit vanishingly small incidence of such diseases, by any modern metric, but their input is contradictory to the thesis and appears to get summarily dumped. The simple fact of their presence across hundreds of years of history leaves the Rogermexico's of this world stunningly unimpressed.

To suggest then that grains being good for you is a thesis still "in search of a validation", while the benefits of a Paleo Diet has been "fully demonstrated" by scientific parsing of it's modern day metabolic impact, takes the exasperation a step further. The Paleo Diet has not yet been tried on a societal scale across multiple ethnic groups, yet alone practiced for 100 or 500 years to provide a real-world data set. Meanwhile, here we are proceeding (appealing to the doctors among us), to discuss the merits of nutrition analysis "by scientific method", while expansively ignoring that there is flatly contradictory insight about whether grains are truly toxic across large sample groups and across significant timespans in the historical world record.

The past 200 years have included a lot of tumultuous events. According to Paleo Nutrition, all of these grain eating peoples have been tottering about in a state of chronic malnutrition and hyperglycemia all this while. IMO if systematically collecting existing diets and tracking their results was a primary focus of Price's work, then he shows more historically respectful caution and innate common sense sleuthing the bottom line here regarding toxic grains than does Rogermexico's Taubes, who arrives at the conclusion that entire swathes of world societies in their consecutive generational wisdom were simply *wrong* to include grains as a viable component of a balanced diet.

So here we have these wonderful "definitive test groups" scattered all over the world, whose rural populations exhibit enviably good health profiles along with grains consumption, - and this stunningly adverse fact to the thesis seems to blur collectively into these sort of large, pooled blind spots for the Paleo Nutrition theorist. When I see an American MD devising an elegantly exclusionary theory - particularly when it enlists the presumed dietary habits of men who walked 20,000 years ago, at the expense of the carefully logged dietary history of the past 500 years of perfectly healthy specimens - I conclude in my untutored supidity that I am contending with "American MD's cultural myopia syndrome" - wherein food stands or falls as a result of scientific deconstruction, before it ever has a viable pedigree as an existing cultural artifact .

At the core of this conceit, is the assumption that when studying really wisely balanced nutrition, one does not need to anchor one's theories on what peoples in the world manifestly do eat to exhibit superb health - when those case histories run flatly contrary to one's developing thesis.

For these self appointed (thriving cottage industry of) medically trained nutritional scholars, there is merely puzzlement, vexation or flat out disinterest, that these existing groups, and their diets provide the simplest and most reliable real world endorsement of what constitutes a balanced and healthy nutrition. In investing we all readily understand the principle of "don't tell the market what to do - ask it rather what it will do" - yet in nutrition, Roger does not wish to appreciate the value of "don't tell the world's populations what constitutes healthy nutrition - ask them rather what they have actually eaten, that has provided healthy populations for centuries.

Roger takes the opposite view - that the question of whether 1/5 or 1/3 of the earth's population has been munching on a toxin for five hundred years with the collective cultural and nutritional intelligence of an army of cows, has already "been clearly adjudicated by the (contemporary state of the art) "science" to the contrary. His view to this reader, seems a bit mired in a close up preoccupation with the illnesses which have sprung up due to America's industrially administered nutrition.

I think Roger's work might benefit from embracing the long history of healthy people evidenced in countries with a rich grain eating tradition (take a break from modern era "peer reviewed scientific case studies"). That means, shelve all of his assumptions long enough to conduct a really impartial investigation as to why those instances have not produced all of the Celiac / Diabetic illnesses he cites as "irrevocably linked" to this class of foods. In short, the world cookbook spanning 200 years and it's consequences, may be a wonderful and grounding preliminary project to be undertaken before the Paleo diet book.

Meanwhile, instead of a straight reckoning of whatever we can glean of the disease level in many grain-eating peoples worldwide in the past 200 years, we get conjectures that sound more like this :

"You can decrease the frequency of meals to spend lots of time in ketosis with low serum glucose and insulin levels even though when you do eat the carb fraction is high. Intermittent fasting is very effective, but very, very difficult to do if you eat high carb and you and your mitochondria are not conditioned to ketosis. When I fast (easily up to 24 hours), I am not hungry, period."

and

"A low-fat or semi-starvation diet (1600 vs 2200 calories) can definitely lower your insulin levels and glucose levels as long as you are in calorie deficit, but not as effectively or safely as a high fat diet, IMO. No question you can get closer to paleo insulin and glucose levels on 1600 cal/day than with the SAD. ..."

The fasting recommendation seems wise enough - but then fasting has been an integral part of Indian (and Buddhist) nutrition for what, a thousand years? That alone does not seem enough to write a macro-thesis changing book about nutrition today. And the very modest food-consumption Japanese would likely look at this enthusiasm a little blankly as well.

Why not instead, just pragmatically take some historical notes of the incidence of Celiac Disease and Diabetes across 200 years of grain eating, for a simpler validation? It appears to have been low to nonexistent, despite grains consumption. Oops. Meanwhile, Raja wrote: "Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there". I don't know how many takers you've got for this observation on these pages, as my impression is that we have many readers here thoroughly in thrall to the "American doctor reliably reveals wise nutrition to us" meme - but for my penny, your observation is the pithiest one on this thread.

Look at all of what people actually ate FOR 500 YEARS to get a more well averaged global verdict on the toxicity of grains - see if they exhibited any of the illnesses which "Paleo-theory" links so irrevocably with the grains. I know for a fact that many segments of the Meditteranean nations peasantry subsisted on far more grain and vegetable fats in the past 2-3 centuries than meat, for the simple reason that they were dirt poor and meat was never as cheap as these other foods. Maintain some appropriate skepticism about employing *any* definitive assertions as to *actual* food class ratios consumed by ancestors 20,000-50,000 years ago.

A cautious investigation would suggest first going in and explaining all of the non-confirmatory instances in the past 500 years - Rogermexico seems to approach it the other way around, vaulting over the heads of the past 500 years of apparently mostly healthy grain eating humans, to invoke only the present crop of urbanized OECD, increasingly sickly food consumers, and then as the antithesis, to enlist the imprecisely recalled Paleolithic diet.

These kinds of statements confirm my skepticism.

And more to the point, Price wasn't doing experimental research -- he was primarily documenting the health condition and dietary habits of some non-industrialized groups around the world -- so peer review isn't really needed.

You think that carbohydrates are not necessary because you cannot find any scientific evidence to that effect. But just remember that paleo people spent thousands of years eating starchy foods, and it is pure arrogance in my opinion for you to think you can ignore that evolutionary heritage.

Archeology cannot tell us much about plant foods, since they do not preserve as bones do. Biochemistry can, and is used, to support every wacko theory of nutrition out there. And medicine . . . well, what do they know about nutrition?

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

the big problem with low carb diets is Atkins.

Everyone thought because of him you should be able to eat as much as you want, as long as you have low carbs you will lose weight.

There have been a bunch of very low fat diets proposed and used in the late 90s, 80s and late 70s. People don't stick to them. again IMHO, Pritikin caused a lot of heart attacks because of wheat's effects on small particle LDL.

Im my experience Atkins works better and is safer than Ornish or Pritikin or any low fat diet - with more loss of fat, less loss of muscle, better improvements in HDL and and triglycerides.

The problem with Atkins is that it is a diet, it has phases, counting, measuring, memorizing carb grams per serving, failure to distinguish between a cookie and two apples and worst of all, letting you "treat" yourself once a week with "rewards" that break the diet - kind of like a marlboro red once a week to reward you for quitting smoking. This creates compliance problems -you are training folks to think they are deprived.

Once you learn what grains are and what has sugar or HFCS or flour in it, my regime requires no counting at all.

The big problem with many other diets is, IMHO, wheat is a poison. Soy too, but less. Rice being the "best"

just because it doesn't kill you acutely doesn't mean it's not a poison.

Agree completely

There's still things we need to study bout low carb, though, because (last time i read about it, several years ago) very few people on the "permanent weight loss registry" are on low carb diets.

I could be on the list but haven't bothered ...

No sure I've ever seen that, but I've heard of it.

You just described one of the reasons no one is on it.

I suppose it's like the "I've finally quit smoking for good this time" registry, who wants to have your friends point it out to you when you've later fallen off the wagon?

Thanks for your comments