Ivo wrote:Not eating dairy I think is yet another mistake in logic. We are mammals - how are we supposed to not be evolved to process milk? Granted there are people with lactose intolerance and dairy is from other species, but depending on the fat, dairy products are not unhealthy. French and Greeks consume a LOT of cheese in their diets for example.
Ivo.
Milk is actually an interesting case. The standard mammal can process lactose for the first period if its life, but then loses the ability to process lactose as it ages and no longer depends on the mother for sustinence. However, as we engaged in animal husbandry we found that it helped our survival to develop lactase persistance, as it gave us a ready source of nutrition that replenished itself. But not all humans had access to animal milk, which is where you get large groups of people who are lactose intolerant.
This is why I think the whole "we aren't supposed to eat grains, since we were hunter gatherers" is a flawed argument. We adapt over time as the food sources shift, and those who can process grains well do better than those who can't when you move to an agrarian society.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
Sideroller wrote:If you ask any professional athlete how they got to be as healthy as they were, they aren't likely to attribute it to any sort of fad diet such as paleolithic eating. They made it to where they were because of simply eating according to their personal needs and lots of exercise.
I have no doubt that eating in this method is probably healthy - but ANY sort of nutritional diet (paleolithic/caveman or otherwise) will give you results WITH exercise.
There is no miracle diet to losing weight, it takes dedication, nutrition and work.
This.
Not this.
Ask anyone at http://www.crossfit.com/ what their opinion of paleolithic nutrition is and you will get many pro-paleolithic advocates who are ripped and are in phenomenal shape.
Also, The Primal Blueprint addresses many of those concerns about athletes and general health, directly from a person who has lived a life of intense fitness. While profession athletes are significantly healthier than you and me, you have to remember the average person is very unhealthy. The bar has been set very low. By engaging in frequent intense workouts, many athletes suffer from respiratory problems, severe energy crashes, frequent colds. So they might not be as healthy as you think, particularly in older age.
MrPopo wrote:
This is why I think the whole "we aren't supposed to eat grains, since we were hunter gatherers" is a flawed argument. We adapt over time as the food sources shift, and those who can process grains well do better than those who can't when you move to an agrarian society.
Lets assume humans have been on the planet for 1 million years (I don't know the exact figure). We have eaten cereal grains for only 10,000 of those years. That is only 0.01% of human existence. Do you think evolutionary adaption only takes 330 generations?
MrPopo wrote:
This is why I think the whole "we aren't supposed to eat grains, since we were hunter gatherers" is a flawed argument. We adapt over time as the food sources shift, and those who can process grains well do better than those who can't when you move to an agrarian society.
Lets assume humans have been on the planet for 1 million years (I don't know the exact figure). We have eaten cereal grains for only 10,000 of those years. That is only 0.01% of human existence. Do you think evolutionary adaption only takes 330 generations?
It can be even shorter. Evolutionary adaption isn't some set in stone process. Try picking up Stephen Gould for a read.
MrPopo wrote:
This is why I think the whole "we aren't supposed to eat grains, since we were hunter gatherers" is a flawed argument. We adapt over time as the food sources shift, and those who can process grains well do better than those who can't when you move to an agrarian society.
Lets assume humans have been on the planet for 1 million years (I don't know the exact figure). We have eaten cereal grains for only 10,000 of those years. That is only 0.01% of human existence. Do you think evolutionary adaption only takes 330 generations?
It can be even shorter. Evolutionary adaption isn't some set in stone process. Try picking up Stephen Gould for a read.
Very true, but this is certainly a fundamental change in eating behaviors.
Sideroller wrote:If you ask any professional athlete how they got to be as healthy as they were, they aren't likely to attribute it to any sort of fad diet such as paleolithic eating. They made it to where they were because of simply eating according to their personal needs and lots of exercise.
I have no doubt that eating in this method is probably healthy - but ANY sort of nutritional diet (paleolithic/caveman or otherwise) will give you results WITH exercise.
There is no miracle diet to losing weight, it takes dedication, nutrition and work.
This.
Not this.
Ask anyone at http://www.crossfit.com/ what their opinion of paleolithic nutrition is and you will get many pro-paleolithic advocates who are ripped and are in phenomenal shape.
Also, The Primal Blueprint addresses many of those concerns about athletes and general health, directly from a person who has lived a life of intense fitness. While profession athletes are significantly healthier than you and me, you have to remember the average person is very unhealthy. The bar has been set very low. By engaging in frequent intense workouts, many athletes suffer from respiratory problems, severe energy crashes, frequent colds. So they might not be as healthy as you think, particularly in older age.
saturnfan wrote:Lets assume humans have been on the planet for 1 million years (I don't know the exact figure). We have eaten cereal grains for only 10,000 of those years. That is only 0.01% of human existence. Do you think evolutionary adaption only takes 330 generations?
It can be even shorter. Evolutionary adaption isn't some set in stone process. Try picking up Stephen Gould for a read.
Very true, but this is certainly a fundamental change in eating behaviors.
Certainly. And it has been shown to be sustainable. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to debate this. I agree with your premise that people aren't eating healthy. I disagree fundamentally with your position that cereal grains are not healthy.
Again, look at milk. Our availability to ready milk sources is on roughly the same timeframe as our consumption of cereal grains. And we have clearly adapted to that by developing a lactase persistence that is unseen in the general mammalian world.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
But we've been eating it constantly for 10,000 years (actually, a bit longer, since documentation of humans eating wheat preceded them growing it for harvest by thousands of years). Alcohol is another thing that we've adapted, and study after study shows that a little bit of alcohol is actually really good for you. This is how we evolve, though. We are exposed to new environments, and are bodies adapt. Sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, but change is inevitable. It's simply bad science (and I'm not saying that the scientists you mentioned are doing this) to think that our bodies are so static.
A great point, I would have to look up some of things I read on dairy to refresh my memory. As you have pointed out, there are million angles to this, hence why I see it as legitimate science and nutritional theory and not a "fad". We wont know all the facts for a long time.
*Edit*
@ o.pwuaioc: None of the research I have read has suggested the human body is static.
