Why I'm not a Paleo diet fan [OLD]

If you eat Paleo and you're happy, I'm happy for you. If you heard of it and unsure if that's something for you, get a few different perspectives.

For those of you who don't know much about Paleo diet it's based on the foods that have been consumed by early humans in Stone Age, prior to agriculture, consisting mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruits, nuts and excluding salt, dairy, legumes, grains, potatoes and processed foods.

However, I find a few issues in it. First, it's called Paleo (also primal or caveman) diet because our paleolithic ancestors ate a certain way, therefore we're trying to mimic that. Why go to Stone Age? Why not go even beyond that when our digestive system as we know it formed millions of years ago (which resembles the big apes the most that are meant to deal with huge amounts of plant matter, mostly leaves, fruits, nuts and seeds)? http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/human-ancestors-were-nearly-all-vegetarians/ (It's a long but very interesting article that also touches a bit on our and our ancestors' gut microbiome and its effect on us). Who decides which period of our history is “the best”?

Even if we try and live like Paleolithic people, we simply can't. The foods now are so different – factory farm (or even grass-fed organic) bred animals are nothing like wild animals back then, and your regular supermarket mono-culture grown broccoli or carrot (even if organic) is nothing like their wild “ancestors”. Also, the food was ripe and fresh, no preservatives were used, no chemicals sprayed. Not even talking about the fresh air and water that they enjoyed, nature they lived in and our modern time stress-free life they had. It's impossible to re-create that environment. And would you really want to? It had negative sides too.

OK, so we're trying to come as close as possible to their diet? Archeological evidence shows that there is no one Paleolithic diet: people were eating what was available in their region (if you're really interested in what your ancestors ate, you can do some genetic testing). Of course, they ate wild animals, but it wasn't the predominant source of calories (especially in more temperate climates where plant foods were abundant). They did however eat grains, legumes and tubers that Paleo diet doesn't involve, and there was no oil that is eaten liberally in today's Paleo diet. The plant foods were hard, fibrous, bitter and low in calories (but very high in phytochemicals!), the animals were lean and all parts of them were eaten (guts, organs, bone marrow). Eggs were hard to come across. Listen to the archaeologist talk about true Paleolithic diets.

I guess, to be as close to Paleo as we can would mean eating lots of vegetables, fruits, greens, nuts and include some animal foods once in a while (some insects, anyone? frogs? or mice?). But that's not what's advertised in the Paleo movement – it's very heavily based on animal products. Actually, in this short video Mic. the Vegan shows how his whole food plant-based diet resembles true Paleolithic diet more than modern Paleo diets when broken down into nutrients. Or if you prefer reading, that's what dietitians Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina say.

What is more, why do we focus on the ancestral nutrition so much? We say because Paleolithic people were fit, healthy and had no heart disease. Well they were fit because they were very physically active – they had to walk and climb in search of food, run from predators etc. All for survival! Sometimes they starved, too. However, most of them were not very lucky to live until old age – that's when heart disease usually switches on. Don't we know better now, with all the science and stuff? We live comfortably in most climate zones, with central heating, clothes, supermarkets, ovens, blenders, nutrition and recipe books and TVs that show the Discovery channel...

When it comes to foods like grains and legumes – they are full of nutrients that we suddenly would be cutting out. And these are some of the healthiest foods that are associated with lowest rates of disease! Potatoes (not in the form of chips or crisps) are also full of nutrition. Of course, you can have a “modified” Paleo diet and include some of these “forbidden” foods, but what's the point then (there's also “modified” Atkins, it doesn't mean it's any better)? Shouldn't we just eat healthily? And with the environmental pollutants so widely spread and concentrating in living tissues (especially fish and seafood) doesn't it make sense to eat as low on the food chain as possible, I mean, eat more plants?

So is there anything I like about Paleo diet? Of course: it does get rid of processed unhealthy foods, salt, sugar and dairy products (although I have met “Paleo” people that still use butter/milk/whey protein powder) and it does encourage exercise and eating vegetables: that alone is a positive step from a standard Western diet. And truth to be told, some people can be sensitive to grains or pulses (a radical example would be Coeliac disease but there are many milder sensitivities), in which case avoiding them might be a good idea. That's why we need an individual approach to nutrition and not to follow diet trends on the media that might have doubtful long-term effects on health.