7 replies to this topic

[willow569]

A rather scathing review of the paleo diet's merits:


The Paleo Diet

Review by Sally Fallon

Peter Paleolith goes ahunting and catches himself a plump prairie hen. Using tools of stone and bone, he removes the entrails and throws them away. Then he plucks off the feathers and peels off the skin--he'd like to eat the succulent fat underneath but he learned during his rites of passage that the fat is taboo. Next he cuts off the dark meat and discards that too. Deftly he separates the white meat from the bone. The bones go in the trash heap and Peter Paleolith is left with. . . skinless chicken breasts!

Then Peter prepares his meal. Because salt didn't exist in those days, he bathes his chicken breasts in lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. He greases his Paleolithic pot with canola oil, the kind his elders recommend. He seasons his meal with ground black pepper or perhaps chili powder which he always carries with him in a leather pouch. And, because he doesn't have any sugar, he washes down his Paleolithic meal with. . . a diet soda!

If this sounds absurd, it's because absurd things happen when a professor of exercise tries to write a diet book that captures the current interest in the so-called caveman diet and adheres to political correctness at the same time. This book is as pc as pc can be--and totally ignorant of what we know about hunter-gatherer diets. Everyone who has described the diets of primitive peoples--Stefansson, Samuel Hearne, Cabeza de Vaca, Weston Price--has detailed the great emphasis these groups put on animal fat. Animal foods rich in fat were the basis of these diets. Animals were hunted selectively to procure those richest in fat. In good times, only the fattest parts were eaten, the lean meat was thrown away. In fact, the one thing Paleolithic Peter would never have eaten was a skinless chicken breast. He wanted the fat, the entrails, the bones, the contents of the stomach. . . the lean meat went to his dogs.

Cordain makes a lot of other crazy claims. He says that Paleolithic peoples had no carbohydrate foods like grains or starchy root foods--never mind reports of grains found in the fire ashes of some of the earliest human groups, or the widespread use of tubers among primitive peoples, usually fermented or slow cooked. He says that there isn't much fat in wild animals (did he check with any hunters while writing his book?) and that what fat these animals had was highly politically correct--low in lethal" saturated fat and rich in monounsaturates and omega-3 fatty acids. Did he look up the fatty acid profile of buffalo fat while researching his book? Obviously not. If he had, it would have ruined his whole theory because buffalo fat is more saturated than beef fat. And obviously he didn't check up on canola oil, which he recommends as a source of omega-3 fatty acids--because virtually all canola oil is deodorized, a process that gets rid of the omega-3s.

Cordain says that primitive man did not eat salt. Yet we know that salt was available in many parts of the world, principally from brine on the seacoasts and salt flats in the interior. Salt-rich blood from game was collected and used in food preparation. In Africa, ashes of sodium-rich marsh grasses were added to food.

Unfortunately, Cordain's Paleo Diet is not only absurd, but also dangerous. High levels of lean meat lead to vitamin A deficiency and a host of health problems, even heart disease, which Cordain's high-protein diet is supposed to prevent. There's no good source of calcium in his diet and no salt, so vital for digestion. He recommends rubbing flax oil on meat before cooking--a recipe for creating carcinogenic oxidation products. And then there are those diet sodas. . . bound to cause trouble in a diet so lacking in protective nutrients. Fortunately, Peter Paleolith never ate this way, or we would not have made it this far.

About the Reviewer

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, and Eat Fat, Lose Fat (both with Mary G. Enig, PhD), as well as of numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. She is President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk. She is the mother of four healthy children raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

[cjb]

Thanks for posting that, Willow.

Sally Fallon herself recommends a more liberal, yet still "paleo" style diet that includes meat, dairy (especially raw), fermented foods like homemade sauerkraut, kefir, and well-soaked grains and legumes (to aid their digestion). Her rationale behind the diet she recommends is based on Weston A. Price's research (apparently very controversial), and is that it IS the food that our ancestors ate.

For many people, the reason to follow any of these diets is to eliminate acne. I think many people could eat more than what paleo restricts you to, and possibly not everything that Sally Fallon recommends (like grains, dairy etc). You can find both hearty recommendations and scathing reveiws of just about any diet you want. Ya just have to test it out, and experiemnt if you want to go the diet route.

[synapse_ita]

really interesting, almost made me want to leave paleo and go back on junky food
i'm joking, obviously

[csamo001]

A rather scathing review of the paleo diet's merits:


The Paleo Diet

Review by Sally Fallon

Peter Paleolith goes ahunting and catches himself a plump prairie hen. Using tools of stone and bone, he removes the entrails and throws them away. Then he plucks off the feathers and peels off the skin--he'd like to eat the succulent fat underneath but he learned during his rites of passage that the fat is taboo. Next he cuts off the dark meat and discards that too. Deftly he separates the white meat from the bone. The bones go in the trash heap and Peter Paleolith is left with. . . skinless chicken breasts!

Then Peter prepares his meal. Because salt didn't exist in those days, he bathes his chicken breasts in lemon juice and balsamic vinegar. He greases his Paleolithic pot with canola oil, the kind his elders recommend. He seasons his meal with ground black pepper or perhaps chili powder which he always carries with him in a leather pouch. And, because he doesn't have any sugar, he washes down his Paleolithic meal with. . . a diet soda!

If this sounds absurd, it's because absurd things happen when a professor of exercise tries to write a diet book that captures the current interest in the so-called caveman diet and adheres to political correctness at the same time. This book is as pc as pc can be--and totally ignorant of what we know about hunter-gatherer diets. Everyone who has described the diets of primitive peoples--Stefansson, Samuel Hearne, Cabeza de Vaca, Weston Price--has detailed the great emphasis these groups put on animal fat. Animal foods rich in fat were the basis of these diets. Animals were hunted selectively to procure those richest in fat. In good times, only the fattest parts were eaten, the lean meat was thrown away. In fact, the one thing Paleolithic Peter would never have eaten was a skinless chicken breast. He wanted the fat, the entrails, the bones, the contents of the stomach. . . the lean meat went to his dogs.

Cordain makes a lot of other crazy claims. He says that Paleolithic peoples had no carbohydrate foods like grains or starchy root foods--never mind reports of grains found in the fire ashes of some of the earliest human groups, or the widespread use of tubers among primitive peoples, usually fermented or slow cooked. He says that there isn't much fat in wild animals (did he check with any hunters while writing his book?) and that what fat these animals had was highly politically correct--low in lethal" saturated fat and rich in monounsaturates and omega-3 fatty acids. Did he look up the fatty acid profile of buffalo fat while researching his book? Obviously not. If he had, it would have ruined his whole theory because buffalo fat is more saturated than beef fat. And obviously he didn't check up on canola oil, which he recommends as a source of omega-3 fatty acids--because virtually all canola oil is deodorized, a process that gets rid of the omega-3s.

Cordain says that primitive man did not eat salt. Yet we know that salt was available in many parts of the world, principally from brine on the seacoasts and salt flats in the interior. Salt-rich blood from game was collected and used in food preparation. In Africa, ashes of sodium-rich marsh grasses were added to food.

Unfortunately, Cordain's Paleo Diet is not only absurd, but also dangerous. High levels of lean meat lead to vitamin A deficiency and a host of health problems, even heart disease, which Cordain's high-protein diet is supposed to prevent. There's no good source of calcium in his diet and no salt, so vital for digestion. He recommends rubbing flax oil on meat before cooking--a recipe for creating carcinogenic oxidation products. And then there are those diet sodas. . . bound to cause trouble in a diet so lacking in protective nutrients. Fortunately, Peter Paleolith never ate this way, or we would not have made it this far.

About the Reviewer

Sally Fallon is the author of Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats, and Eat Fat, Lose Fat (both with Mary G. Enig, PhD), as well as of numerous articles on the subject of diet and health. She is President of the Weston A. Price Foundation and founder of A Campaign for Real Milk. She is the mother of four healthy children raised on whole foods including butter, cream, eggs and meat.

Caveman diet, fat-ass diet, bazooka diet,... I really don't give a damn about the name, as long as it works for me and my skin is well and I feel good. Hairsplitting....

[lynn]

I agree that it's easy to critique this diet. It's silly to pretend we are eating like cavemen. However, in Cordain's acne book, he doesn't really stress the "hunter/gatherer" thing quite as much as I thought he would. He talks more about his observations. I take the "paleolithic" part as just one possible explanation for why some of the diet works. But, hey, he needs to sell books, right? and people need to latch on to a gimmick, like "eating like your ancient ancestors."

Plus, I have read many places that it's true that humans didn't really eat grains until 10,000 years ago. And Cordain is referring to what people ate BEFORE that, and what some non-Western groups eat today. I suppose a criticism can be made that he may have committed the anthropology sin of equating ancient societies with modern day "hunter/gatheres".

[tigermike]

Good post.
I follow a "primal" or "caveman" or "paleo" type diet as well. So i'm very familiar with Cordain.
One thing i've always disagreed with was his stance on Saturated Fat.
The widely held belief that saturated fats will "clog your arteries" and "cause heart disease" just isn't true.
Have you heard about Mark Sisson or Dr. Eades?
check out MarksDailyApple.com

[JEedgarB]

Ms Fallon's critique of the Paleo Diet shows her bias and lack of both science and common sense. I suspect she is one of the vegetarian avengers who haunt the Internet, spreading the false teachings of "love animals, meat is bad", et c.

I would honor Ms. Fallon if she responds to this reply, although veg-avengers usually do not have the courage. In case my email doesn't show, it's johnebillings@yahoo.com.

Now about Dr. Cordain's research and the Paleo Diet, here are some simple facts, which even a person who abstains from meat can understand:
1. Anyone can survive on meat, but no one can survive on vegetables only.
2. All existing hunter-gatherers hunt meat; that is why they are called hunter-gatherers. There are no vegetarians in the natural state.
3. We cannot digest raw starch, such as grain or potatoes, but we can digest raw meat.
4. We can eat any animal with fur, feathers, or fins, but most plants are indigestible and many are poisonous.
5. None of this means that we are carnivores; by nature we are omnivores and need both animal and vegetable foods.

I am certain that Ms. Fallon can comprehend these points. Any readers of this forum are also welcome to reply personally.

The Paleo Diet stands alone as the only diet regime based on science rather than fads, collections of data with no theory, or religious ideas about food. Eating Paleo is the natural way, the way we were and are designed to eat. The sciences of evolution, anthropology, and ecology all show that our Paleolithic ancestors were omnivores, and we will be healthiest by following their dietary pattern.

[b9177]

Ms Fallon's critique of the Paleo Diet shows her bias and lack of both science and common sense. I suspect she is one of the vegetarian avengers who haunt the Internet, spreading the false teachings of "love animals, meat is bad", et c.

I would honor Ms. Fallon if she responds to this reply, although veg-avengers usually do not have the courage. In case my email doesn't show, it's johnebillings@yahoo.com.

Now about Dr. Cordain's research and the Paleo Diet, here are some simple facts, which even a person who abstains from meat can understand:
1. Anyone can survive on meat, but no one can survive on vegetables only.
2. All existing hunter-gatherers hunt meat; that is why they are called hunter-gatherers. There are no vegetarians in the natural state.
3. We cannot digest raw starch, such as grain or potatoes, but we can digest raw meat.
4. We can eat any animal with fur, feathers, or fins, but most plants are indigestible and many are poisonous.
5. None of this means that we are carnivores; by nature we are omnivores and need both animal and vegetable foods.

I am certain that Ms. Fallon can comprehend these points. Any readers of this forum are also welcome to reply personally.

The Paleo Diet stands alone as the only diet regime based on science rather than fads, collections of data with no theory, or religious ideas about food. Eating Paleo is the natural way, the way we were and are designed to eat. The sciences of evolution, anthropology, and ecology all show that our Paleolithic ancestors were omnivores, and we will be healthiest by following their dietary pattern.

Are you familiar with Sally Fallon at all? She is a huge advocate of the consumption of animal products/meat, as long as they are prepared and consumed in the healthiest ways, which includes eating the full-fat parts of food, which she contends allows for full absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. She is hardly an advocate for vegetarianism, and actually promotes an eating style based on more primitive ways. She was critiquing that particular paleo diet advocated by Cordain because many parts of it were not representative of how people originally ate, and (apparently-I'm not myself familiar with Cordain but I'm basing this off Fallon's critique) included some outright unhealthy practices (such as the use of canola oil).