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from the wait-a-few-years,-it-will-change-again dept.
The Paleo, or 'caveman' diet, consists of meat, vegetables, nuts, and limited fruit. It excludes grains, legumes, dairy, salt, and refined sugars and oils. Unfortunately in a recent study researchers also found it leads to reduced beneficial gut bacteria and twice the level of trimethylamin-n-oxide (TMAO), which is linked closely with increased risk of heart disease.
[Lead researcher Dr Angela Genoni] said the reason TMAO was so elevated in people on the Paleo diet appeared to be the lack of whole grains in their diet.
"We found the lack of whole grains were associated with TMAO levels, which may provide a link between the reduced risks of cardiovascular disease we see in populations with high intakes of whole grains," she said.
TMAO is produced in the gut, and gut bacteria change based on diet composition. In this case, the removal of whole grains, with "resistant starch and many other fermentable fibres that are vital to the health of your gut microbiome"
"Additionally, the Paleo diet includes greater servings per day of red meat, which provides the precursor compounds to produce TMAO, and Paleo followers consumed twice the recommended level of saturated fats, which is cause for concern.
The article conludes that "A variety of fiber components, including whole grain sources may be required to maintain gut and cardiovascular health."
Modified Paleo anyone?
Journal Reference
Genoni, A., Christophersen, C.T., Lo, J. et al. Eur J Nutr (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-019-02036-y
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday July 23 2019, @06:05PM (2 children)
While several of your points are good, your whole post would be better if you didn't succumb to the same argumentation strategies you criticize. In particular, you complain about "binary arguments," but then make assertions like:
There are quite a few people who "don't paleo" and aren't "fat and dead."
On the other hand,
That's one possible "side effect." There are many people who do various types of low-carb diets including "paleo" of different varieties and still do not manage to maintain a "healthy low weight." There are many people who do the "cavemen diet" and act like it's a license to eat all sorts of the worst sort of meats, don't consume veggies (thus failing to get some nutrients), and then end up fat on top of it. Not saying this happens all the time, and while I've seen some studies indicating a slightly higher success rate at high protein-low carb diets than others, it's not like it's well-established science that those who "do paleo" must end up healthy.
Just a query, but do you do as much physical exercise as your ancestors? More importantly, do most people who make such an argument do as much exercise their ancestors? Unless their ancestors were aristocrats, I'd bet one significant difference is that modern people have all sorts of "labor-saving" conveniences that take away small to large amounts of exertion on a daily basis. Those little conveniences add up over the years, both in terms of calorie burning and in terms of general fitness. And 30 minutes at the gym a couple days/week is probably no where near the same as the amount of general exertion people had to make on a regular basis in just living normal life and doing common tasks prior to the past few generations. Diet isn't everything.
I don't disagree with that statement at all. But TFA is in no place arguing in favor of "high refined carb consumption," only that the addition of SOME carb sources (like whole grains) may be beneficial rather than trying to eliminate them completely.
Lastly, a general point about the "paleo" nonsense -- and yes, it is a nonsense thing. It may or may not be a better diet for health or nutrition or weight maintenance than other diets (high-carb or low-carb or otherwise), but calling it "paleo" or pretending it has anything to do with primitive human diet is absolute idiocy. The original study link here starts out in the introduction by discussing fiber intake, which seems one of their concerns related to whole-grains. That's one serious issue with the "paleo" diet as commonly practiced.
Actual historical vegetables and fruits tended to have much higher fiber-to-nutrient ratios. The fruit we eat today is most frankenstein-like results of selective breeding compared to what the "caveman" would have eaten. Our modern fruit has a lot more sugar, and even most vegetables are significantly sweeter and more nutritious than those available tens of thousands of years ago. Similar arguments apply to many nuts.
Meanwhile, before agriculture, the type of meat that was eaten wasn't farmed, bred to grow fast and produce large quantities of "marbled meat," and fattened obviously. It was lean game with significantly different nutrient profiles.
I know some "paleo" folks tend to try to find leaner meat, but many just eat the normal modern farm-raised meat that other people do. It's next-to-impossible to find realistic examples of only "wild" fruits and vegetables, so most people are consuming things that have a lot more carbs and a lot less fiber than their "caveman" ancestors would have in these so-called "paleo" diets. (And maybe TFA is wrong to push carbs necessarily -- maybe the link they mention in the intro about fiber intake is as important or more important.)
In essence, the entire premise of the "paleo" diet is mostly BS. That doesn't mean it can't empirically work well for some people for weight maintenance or even better health outcomes. But let's not pursue it on the premise that it has a clear relationship to what humans ate before agriculture, because the products you can buy in most common supermarkets have been irrevocably altered by agriculture, even if you buy "organic" and "grass-fed" etc. For the level of ignorance about paleobotany and the influence of agriculture on our food sources alone, the "paleo" diet should be labeled as a "fad."
Maybe it's okay, though. Or maybe, just maybe -- TFA here which advocates adding a bit of whole-grains a la the traditional "Mediterranean Diet" might also have a point. Or maybe not. Nutritional studies are incredibly difficult to do -- as you rightly point out, causation is difficult to determine. And if you are "doing Paleo" and feeling healthy, more power to you.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 23 2019, @11:44PM
and same diet has different effects in different people depending on it. Old news, really.
One can be, for example, digesting a large fraction of "indigestible" "dietary fiber", throwing all calories calculation completely out of whack.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday July 24 2019, @08:16PM
Yeah fair enough but its the usual problem of "quite a few individuals" vs trying to prescribe for a culture/civilization. The old "I know several people who still haven't died in a car crash so there should be no regulations requiring seatbelts" argument. As a fedgov USA wide USDA policy, low fat high carb obviously doesn't kill everybody, but the effect on national aggregate health statistics over the last couple decades are pretty awful to contemplate.
Yeah I love the analogy of diet and religion because this is the same problem as people who virtue signal in church on Sunday morning and then F up the world for the other 6.8 days per week... I think its human nature that anything good will occasionally be used by a small fraction of the population as a license to do dumb stuff. Definitely not an exclusively paleo, or exclusively religious, thing.
I don't want to get all /fit/ posting but the eternal saying of you can't outrun a fork.
The irony is regular exercise is excellent for the body in general, but it takes heroic athlete or grunt labor lifestyles to keep up with a chezburger diet. The "general public" is sorely misinformed about energy, such that they think briskly walking across the street to starbucks will eliminate a thousand calories of corn syrup in their coffee drinks and so forth.
Most people, especially fat people, just don't have the joints and tendons to handle working off a double quarter pounder with chez faster than they can digest it. Its not a matter of time to exercise or motivation, but their back and knees are literally not able to burn calories as fast as we can eat them.
Do need exercise; however just like flooring the gas and brakes on a car at the same time and one pedal will win, its just not thermodynamically possible to exercise ones way out of a bad diet. Just can't fix an ice cream problem with a treadmill.
I will tentatively not disagree in that there is always an issue in (non-religious based) diets of the conceptual difference between a dominant macro nutrient, something you have on cheat day at the birthday party, a supplement, and a medicine. Certainly, grains seem useless and bad and generally result in fat people when used as a macronutrient. I enjoy a delicious slice of cake less than once a month and a mostly paleo means I can occasionally abuse my body like that, although obviously its not ideal. The problem with copes like "its my medicine" is you run into the people calling heroin, MJ, and bowls of ice cream their mental health "medicine" and abusing them daily, and in the case of bowls of ice cream they get really fat and sick.
Yeah but thats kinda the point I'm trying to make about diet as a religion being a bad idea. As a religious diet with rules from God, nothing works, not even paleo. The theoretical paleo god is really pissed at the sinners who eat genetically enhanced tomatoes, but since that god doesn't exist it doesn't mean avoiding a handful of cookies in favor of a cherry tomato is a bad idea. Yes a beef steak from the grocery store is not as natural paleo or "paleo kosher" or whatever you want to call it as a theoretical unreachable ideal slab of meat that can't exist outside of theory, but that does not mean a diet of twinkies and soda is a great idea or the idea of non-religious paleo is bad. Yes as a painful religious standin, from a paleo standpoint, we're all sinners. That doesn't mean the diet is bad, it means the outlook on life of thinking of diet as a religion is the bad process.
Also the logical fallacy of, OK, if we MUST treat diet as a religious obligation, then its unclear why if there are no true scotsman... err, paleo eaters, and if all paleo eaters are sinners, if the listener incorrectly views diet thru a religious lens, then OK, the paleo religion sucks. But nobody extends the logical argument further; if paleo-as-a-religion sucks, is anyone implying that twinkie worship or corn syrup worship is a demonstratively superior outcome religion? Kinda stuck... treating diet as religion is a bad idea, but if you make that first huge mistake, the fact that paleo-worshippers are sinners STILL doesn't change the fact that they're healthier and longer lived (frankly, happier?) than the twinkie worshippers and corn syrup worshippers, so if failed sinner adherents of paleo have a better life than the most devout corn syrup worshippers, why virtue signal at the church of corn syrup?
Again, are we talking about a sample size of one, or USDA policy for an entire nation? The existence of one apocryphal dude with an unusual metabolism that's optimized to eat nothing but pizza rolls, who, I'll admit, might actually exist, does not mean the fedgov should sentence millions on average to a young fat diabetic demise.
There's a large separation between "Maybe in a couple years your doctor might prescribe some newly invented supplement pill to your otherwise healthy mostly paleo-ish diet, or maybe one research paper turned out to be wrong happens all the time" vs "Ah ha ha you devout paleo as a religion sinners you thought your religion was healthier but where's your God now ha ha". Especially when the pre-requisite diet-as-a-shitty-modern-substitute-for-religion is very unappealing to most.