Paleo Diet

           I eat a "paleo diet," but I really don't like the term "paleo" with regards to the diet.  I think it conjures up images of a caveman, scrounging for food, wearing furs, dying when you're 30, and etc.  While many of the other paleo bloggers or writers have embraced the caveman idea, I have not.  I am getting a little ahead of myself, though.  The purpose of this post is simply to introduce the paleo diet's framework and concept, so first I need tell you what the paleo diet is.

           A paleo diet eschews grains, legumes, and dairy.  It also removes any processed foods or sugary foods.  Instead this diet encourages you to eat your veggies by the truckload, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some meat/seafood.  Yes, this diet requires you to remove your heart healthy whole grains, and it tells you that the reason for that is that grains simply aren't heart healthy!  Or healthy at all for that matter.



          The premise of the diet is that our genetic makeup was honed by millions of years of evolution, and during that time, we were essentially built to run on a diet based on certain foods - those that you could gain by hunting or foraging as a paleolithic hunter-gatherer would: veggies by the truckload, some fruit, some nuts and seeds, and some meat/seafood.  Grains, legumes, and dairy, however, have only been introduced into the human diet in the last 40,000 years or so.  Unfortunately, this short period of time is not long enough for us to have evolved to run on these foods.  Instead, we get slammed with a macronutrient breakdown that we are not built to be able to handle, and we introduce our body to a plethora of chemical compounds that we are not familiar with (the classic example is gluten).  The result?  Poor health.  The works: obesity, heart disease, diabetes, etc... some of the biggest killers in our modern day and age.

          So, the big question you may have: why are grains unhealthy?  I'm sure it sounds ridiculous to you.  The government, your doctor, and everyone you know has been telling you that the best thing you can do for your health is to eat your healthy whole grains.  Well, in an effort to bring you a well thought out, well researched blog with ironclad science behind it - as I hope any other med-school bound blogger would do - I'm going to hold off on answering that question until a later post that will deal specifically with grains.  This post is just supposed to be an introduction to the paleo diet concept, so for the moment I want to deal with two other points.

          First, what if I didn't tell you any of that stuff about paleo or grains being bad?  What if I said: I eat a veggies and meat diet.  I would tell you that I occasionally have a piece of fruit or some nuts, but for most of my meals, I eat a boatload of veggies and a smaller serving of lean meat.  That sounds pretty good.  Did you even notice I didn't say anything about grains?  I think the paleo diet catches a lot of criticism just for going against the conventional wisdom and immediately telling you to never eat grains.  People shut down and stop listening to anything else.  They have already been locked out, and from there, they won't be able to listen to the science.  And that's the important part; not what hunter gatherers did 40,000 years ago or how nutrition relates to evolution.  Those are only starting points.  All that matters is the science.  Instead I want to focus on the other part of the paleo diet: eat mountains of veggies.  Nobody is going to argue against that.  Veggies are loaded with anti-oxidants, vitamins and mineral, and fiber, everything we love.

          So, in the name of eating mountains of veggies, say you swap out your morning bowl of cereal for an omelette filled to the brim with broccoli, spinach, and mushrooms.  Okay, that sounds like a fair trade, and I think most people would agree it's healthier.  Let's cook it in olive oil and make it an egg white omelette just to make sure everyone is on board.  Then, for lunch, instead of your normal turkey sandwich, let's just make a salad with tons of greens, carrots, peppers, and the same shredded turkey thrown on top.  That sounds like a fair trade too.  Then for dinner, instead of chicken parm on a bed of pasta, let's make some grilled chicken in a pesto sauce with a side of asparagus and broccoli.  That sounds pretty good too, right?  When looked at from the angle of: "eat as many vegetables in a day as I can" rather than "never ever eat grains," then this diet starts to look pretty good.

          The other thing I want to suggest to you is to look around at the people you know and the America you're familiar with hearing about.  We all know how bad the problems with the obesity epidemic and heart disease are.  Just look here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm.  The leading cause of death in America is heart disease, followed closely by cancer (note: this list is from 2009; cancer more recently topped the list).  Other big players on the list are diabetes and Alzheimer's (which recent research has suggested to be diabetes of the brain - http://alzheimersweekly.com/content/brain-diabetes-alzheimers).  We have a problem, and it is insidious, because it is everywhere.  Everyone has been taught to limit their saturated fat and eat their heart healthy whole grains, but how many people do you know who do that religiously but still have high cholesterol or heart disease or are obese or suffer from one of these other diseases?  I know a few.

          Let me just suggest something to you, and in doing so, I know that the burden of proof will be on me to build a convincing argument around it as I continue to write this blog.  What if the culprits we have long suspected are not the guilty ones?  What if your saturated fat is not congealing in your arteries and killing you like we suspected for so long?  What if the real answer lies somewhere else, and that is precisely why all of our preventive measures cannot do anything to change the disease patterns we see in society?  Worse, what if one of the things we have long held up as healthy, as one of our only hopes, is the culprit?  What if our healthy whole grains are causing heart disease, Alzheimer's and diabetes and contributing to cancer?  Will you at least admit that it could be possible?  Well, what we do know is that the system we have now is not working, and the dietary recommendations we have had for so long aren't changing things.  Maybe it's time to look for some other solutions.  This will be the first in a series of blog posts dedicated to exploring these questions and the paleo diet concept.