primal diet

[ballen0351]

So my daughter is 10 and her doc told us after years of digestion issues she needs to go on a gluten free diet. So as a show of support my wife and I went gluten free as well. We have been doing it since mid October so far. Well her entire attitude has changed she's less moody her digestion problems have all but gone away. I've dropped over 30 pounds of weight and feel great. So I've been researching it a little more and find all these claims of people going Paleo or Primal and curing deseases and all kinds of stuff it seems like its all BS. I got the Primal Blueprint book a few weeks ago and read thru most of it and it all seems to go against everything we are taught about diet and nutrition. I was wondering if anyone has been doing this long term and what the downsides are. I know there are plenty of much smarter people then me on here so I figured I'd ask.

 

[Makalakumu]

So my daughter is 10 and her doc told us after years of digestion issues she needs to go on a gluten free diet. So as a show of support my wife and I went gluten free as well. We have been doing it since mid October so far. Well her entire attitude has changed she's less moody her digestion problems have all but gone away. I've dropped over 30 pounds of weight and feel great. So I've been researching it a little more and find all these claims of people going Paleo or Primal and curing deseases and all kinds of stuff it seems like its all BS. I got the Primal Blueprint book a few weeks ago and read thru most of it and it all seems to go against everything we are taught about diet and nutrition. I was wondering if anyone has been doing this long term and what the downsides are. I know there are plenty of much smarter people then me on here so I figured I'd ask.

I've eaten a paleo diet for about two years and have experienced many of the same things that are cited in the research. Another good book is The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf.

 

[elder999]

I've eaten a paleo diet for about two years and have experienced many of the same things that are cited in the research. Another good book is The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf.

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[Makalakumu]

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Yeah, i know you have some issues with that name. Paleo people would have eaten whatever they could find, including sources of carbs. I still eat carbs, but they are usually more natural, rather then processed. I really like yams and Okinawan sweet potatoes. I'll be grilling some up today with a fat juicy ribeye, grassfed of course.

 

[ballen0351]

Yeah, i know you have some issues with that name. Paleo people would have eaten whatever they could find, including sources of carbs. I still eat carbs, but they are usually more natural, rather then processed. I really like yams and Okinawan sweet potatoes. I'll be grilling some up today with a fat juicy ribeye, grassfed of course.

I was just suprised at the difference its made in my daughter. We are cosidering putting all our kids on it. its so drastic I can tell by her behavior if she ate something wiith gluten at a friends house. I ate a bagel yesterday first real bread ive had since we started and my stomach hurt but i just wonder if it was more mental then anything.

 

[elder999]

I was just suprised at the difference its made in my daughter. We are cosidering putting all our kids on it. its so drastic I can tell by her behavior if she ate something wiith gluten at a friends house. I ate a bagel yesterday first real bread ive had since we started and my stomach hurt but i just wonder if it was more mental then anything.

Nah. I had cake earlier, for the first time in months, and it was really f#$~ing my $h*t up until a half hour ago......more the combination of sugar and fat than the wheat product thing, but still......your body will have reactions, good and bad, to everything you ingest, especially those you haven't ingested for a while....

 

[Carol]

Made a huge difference with me. I am still struggling with weight issues (nothing new there) but after switching to that way of eating I feel tons better than I used to.

Big thing to watch for is quality of your proteins. Grass fed/pastured meats often offer a better lipid balance than grain-fed. If you cannot find or cannot swing pastured meats, look for leaner cuts of skinless meats and balance out your fats (if needed) with olives or an avocado.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[granfire]

hm, I have heard the theory that modern grains are just not as digestible as the old fashioned ones, not to throw GMO in the mix.
or did a lot of the intestinal problems just get collectively labeled 'irritable bowel'?

eating more foods closer to the natural state is certainly not bad for you. a 'friend' has a small farm on which she raises chickens and turkeys and I think some cattle, 'organic'
On my other stomping ground, grain vs grass fed beef is a hot topic. I think it's largely a personal preference.
The meat from the smaller farms is a bit higher than the regular produced stuff - but gawd, when I look at the mess at the grocery store...it is worth it to find that small farmer! (along with all the other benefits!)

it's a lifestyle change! That's for sure!

 

[ballen0351]

localheard the theory that modern grains are just not as digestible as the old fashioned ones, not to throw GMO in the mix.
or did a lot of the intestinal problems just get collectively labeled 'irritable bowel'?

eating more foods closer to the natural state is certainly not bad for you. a 'friend' has a small farm on which she raises chickens and turkeys and I think some cattle, 'organic'
On my other stomping ground, grain vs grass fed beef is a hot topic. I think it's largely a personal preference.
The meat from the smaller farms is a bit higher than the regular produced stuff - but gawd, when I look at the mess at the grocery store...it is worth it to find that small farmer! (along with all the other benefits!)

it's a lifestyle change! That's for sure!

Yeah there was a small local butcher shop I loved to go to his meats were top dollar but it was all super high quality. But sadly he closed his door on DEC 15 said he can't compete anymore. Sad day for small business owner.

 

[Xue Sheng]

People are also getting rather amazing resaults as it applies to thier health by doing what is in Joel Fuhrman, book In Eat to Live to... and that is far from the "Paleo Diet"

So what does that tell us...

 

[ballen0351]

People are also getting rather amazing resaults as it applies to thier health by doing what is in Joel Fuhrman, book In Eat to Live to... and that is far from the "Paleo Diet"

So what does that tell us...

I dont know who he is so I don't know what it tells us

 

[Xue Sheng]

I dont know who he is so I don't know what it tells us

He is pushing a vegetarian diet (lots of vegetables and lots of fruit) with protein from non-animal sources or at best a pescetarianism, or pollotarianism diet, meaning not so much meat and people feel great and lose weight and get healthier and get sick less

What I wonder about these diets is what are the long term effects of them.

We are not carnivores nor are we herbivores...we are omnivores and our anatomy proves that. I understand food allergies and the need to avoid certain foods for some people but all meat or all vegetables simply does not make sense to me...although my Buddhist/Vegetarian Mother-in-law is the healthiest person I have ever personally known

 

[Makalakumu]

The common factor is cutting out the crappy processed foods, it seems. If you can shift your diet to more vegetable based or animal protein based and avoid some sources of carbohydrates (mainly grains) health seems to improve.

I read this article a couple of years a go and it blew my mind. In it, Jared Diamond explains how agriculture could be viewed as the worst mistake in human history. The whole article is worth a read, but here is the part that fits in this thread...

http://discovermagazine.com/1987/may/02-the-worst-mistake-in-the-history-of-the-human-race

While the case for the progressivist view seems overwhelming, it's hard to prove. How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming? Until recently, archaeologists had to resort to indirect tests, whose results (surprisingly) failed to support the progressivist view. Here's one example of an indirect test: Are twentieth century hunter-gatherers really worse off than farmers? Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"


While farmers concentrate on high-carbohydrate crops like rice and potatoes, the mix of wild plants and animals in the diets of surviving hunter-gatherers provides more protein and a bettter balance of other nutrients. In one study, the Bushmen's average daily food intake (during a month when food was plentiful) was 2,140 calories and 93 grams of protein, considerably greater than the recommended daily allowance for people of their size. It's almost inconceivable that Bushmen, who eat 75 or so wild plants, could die of starvation the way hundreds of thousands of Irish farmers and their families did during the potato famine of the 1840s.


+++

So the lives of at least the surviving hunter-gatherers aren't nasty and brutish, even though farmes have pushed them into some of the world's worst real estate. But modern hunter-gatherer societies that have rubbed shoulders with farming societies for thousands of years don't tell us about conditions before the agricultural revolution. The progressivist view is really making a claim about the distant past: that the lives of primitive people improved when they switched from gathering to farming. Archaeologists can date that switch by distinguishing remains of wild plants and animals from those of domesticated ones in prehistoric garbage dumps.
How can one deduce the health of the prehistoric garbage makers, and thereby directly test the progressivist view? That question has become answerable only in recent years, in part through the newly emerging techniques of paleopathology, the study of signs of disease in the remains of ancient peoples.


In some lucky situations, the paleopathologist has almost as much material to study as a pathologist today. For example, archaeologists in the Chilean deserts found well preserved mummies whose medical conditions at time of death could be determined by autopsy (Discover, October). And feces of long-dead Indians who lived in dry caves in Nevada remain sufficiently well preserved to be examined for hookworm and other parasites.


Usually the only human remains available for study are skeletons, but they permit a surprising number of deductions. To begin with, a skeleton reveals its owner's sex, weight, and approximate age. In the few cases where there are many skeletons, one can construct mortality tables like the ones life insurance companies use to calculate expected life span and risk of death at any given age. Paleopathologists can also calculate growth rates by measuring bones of people of different ages, examine teeth for enamel defects (signs of childhood malnutrition), and recognize scars left on bones by anemia, tuberculosis, leprosy, and other diseases.

One straight forward example of what paleopathologists have learned from skeletons concerns historical changes in height. Skeletons from Greece and Turkey show that the average height of hunger-gatherers toward the end of the ice ages was a generous 5' 9'' for men, 5' 5'' for women. With the adoption of agriculture, height crashed, and by 3000 B. C. had reached a low of only 5' 3'' for men, 5' for women. By classical times heights were very slowly on the rise again, but modern Greeks and Turks have still not regained the average height of their distant ancestors.


Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive."

 

[Xue Sheng]

Something to consider in any diet of the past is that they moved more than we do on average. None of them sat and watched TV and none of them sat at their computer for hours on end at work either. They tended to get more exercise than we do be they farmers or hunter gatherers. I could be wrong, but I am betting none of them drove a vehicle to farm or hunt or gather.

 

[ballen0351]

He is pushing a vegetarian diet (lots of vegetables and lots of fruit) with protein from non-animal sources or at best a pescetarianism, or pollotarianism diet, meaning not so much meat and people feel great and lose weight and get healthier and get sick less

What I wonder about these diets is what are the long term effects of them.

We are not carnivores nor are we herbivores...we are omnivores and our anatomy proves that. I understand food allergies and the need to avoid certain foods for some people but all meat or all vegetables simply does not make sense to me...although my Buddhist/Vegetarian Mother-in-law is the healthiest person I have ever personally known

I like steak too much to give it up.

 

[Xue Sheng]

I like steak too much to give it up.

Well I'm certainly not saying you have to...I'm just wondering what the long term effects of eating nothing but steak would be on aperson say 10 or 15 years down the road. There have been a few studies on small groups of vegetarians (mostly heart patients) that appear to show they get and stay healthy but thereis a lot more to being a vegetarian that just eating salad and they need to balance what they eat to get the proper nutrients for their bodies

 

[ballen0351]

Well I'm certainly not saying you have to...I'm just wondering what the long term effects of eating nothing but steak would be on aperson say 10 or 15 years down the road. There have been a few studies on small groups of vegetarians (mostly heart patients) that appear to show they get and stay healthy but thereis a lot more to being a vegetarian that just eating salad and they need to balance what they eat to get the proper nutrients for their bodies

Oh I would never do that. My diet since the switch is about 70% vegetables 30% meats. I eat tons of fresh spinich ans kale almost daily. I just cut out grains and processed foods.

 

[alburyscott]

I think a very common misconception of the "paleo" or "primal" type f diet is that it is mostly meat. Thats rubbish. Utter rubbish (or should be), it should be a vast amount of high nutrient density food, including meats, vegetables, fruit (especially if you are not trying to loose weight) and nuts and seeds. In fact you can be "plant based" and still be paleo/primal.

Just my 2 c worth.

I have myself, and a number of patients, at 90% paleo, and some BIG health changes, and have been so for quite a while. Hardly science, but interesting all the same. One down side (if you can call it that), especially for kids, may be that the effects of some foods may become more apparent if they are fed "crap" at kids parties etc. Other than that, personally I have not noticed anything

 

[ballen0351]

One down side (if you can call it that), especially for kids, may be that the effects of some foods may become more apparent if they are fed "crap" at kids parties etc. Other than that, personally I have not noticed anything

That's the biggest surprise to me. I never thought food would make much difference in mood. But I can tell a total difference in my daughter if she's ate something she shouldn't have. Even she can tell now and is making better choices for herself. Biggest problem for her now is how many things have gluten in them that you wouldn't expect so its hard for her at her age if were not with her.

 

[Xue Sheng]

Heck, the last time I was mostly Vegatarian (pescetarianism/pollotarianism) if I ate junk I felt sick