
“Paleofantasy”: Stone Age delusions - tangue
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/10/paleofantasy_stone_age_delusions/
======
brd
The biggest problem I have with Zuk is that the entire premise of this book is
based on a straw man argument. The "Paleo" in paleo diet comes from the fact
that there was a clear dip in human health once we entered the neolithic era
(i.e. started farming). We are not emulating a caveman's diet per se, we are
simply trying to find and remove what caused that original dip in health.

To anyone uninformed about the paleo diet:

The Paleo diet is not a crusade against anything that isn't a meat or
vegetable and its certainly not trying to perfectly emulate some fictitious
caveman's food diary. The paleo diet is a recommendation to avoid things that
have anti-nutritional properties, things that may tax our liver or our insulin
response or halt our ability to digest vitamins and minerals as effectively.

The critical takeaway from the paleo diet is that there are many foods that
the average person may have a "tolerance" for, but why eat foods we simply
tolerate when we can eat foods that we thrive on?

~~~
ellyagg
Indeed, it's a review by someone with an axe to grind about a book by someone
with an axe to grind.

I'm not a "Paleo" person, but the hinting in this article that folks trying to
infer better living patterns from the past are loons is faintly preposterous.
We have just mounds of evidence (which doubters are free to research
themselves) that many pre-Agricultural societies had (and have, actually) far
lower rates of the so-called "diseases of civilizations". More abstractly,
evolution isn't magic. There is some rate of lifestyle change due to
technology that will outstrip evolution's ability to accommodate it.

Hunters and gatherers weren't obese. We are. By irrefutable inference, some
lifestyle difference explains this. One valid way to approach the problem of
our accelerating obesity is to study what has changed. The theory that I
consider most likely at this point is the one argued by Stephan Guyenet, a
PH.D. neurobiology researcher who studies the link between obesity and the
brain. He posits that modern industrial food is hyperpalatable, so we eat too
much of it.

[http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/10/case-for-
food-...](http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2011/10/case-for-food-reward-
hypothesis-of.html)

It wouldn't be the favorite theory in the Paleo community, I imagine, but it
springs from the same intuition.

~~~
tjogin
Diseases of civilization are a function of congregation, not eating grains.

Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury.

~~~
Evgeny
_Obesity is the result of a caloric surplus. Cavemen didn't have that luxury._

Obesity epidemic is a very recent phenomenon. Are you arguing that there were
no societies that had caloric surplus up until late in the XX century?

Or would you say that American Samoa with obesity levels of 70% [1] somehow
have the luxury of having calorie surplus, while people of Switzerland (8.2%
obesity) are struggling to get enough food?

Speaking about Paleo diet in particular, why don't those guys gorge themselves
into obesity [2]?

 _The Kitavan people have been under greater study for their remarkable health
characteristics. The people show no indication of coronary heart disease,
stroke, diabetes, dementia, congestive heart failure, acne, low or high blood
pressure, or obesity. There is also almost no indication of cancer._

 _The Kitavans have abundant food supply and are not threatened by
malnutrition or famine._

[1] [https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/...](https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-
factbook/rankorder/2228rank.html)

[2] <http://wiki.whebsite.com/kitava>

~~~
tjogin
> Are you arguing that there were no societies that had caloric surplus up
> until late in the XX century?

No, only that a caloric surplus is necessary to gain weight. Matter cannot be
created from nothing, a surplus of energy is required to perform all the
bodily functions and to also build body mass.

A people can have an abundance of food and still not get obese, if they simply
don't eat too much of it, relative to their caloric expenditure.

------
mekoka
Disclaimer: I started reading on the paleo diet about a month ago, after
friends recommended it as a support for my strength & conditioning routines.
I've been loosely following the guidelines for the past 2 weeks. I do see an
improvement in my sleep quality and in the past week have noticed a spike in
my swimming endurance.

This article highlights one aspect of the scientific community that I abhor,
the petty disputes. So on one side we have Cordain, who promotes a new diet
that seems to carry some widely documented positive results, but who may be
inaccurate in his notion that _we haven't had time to adapt to changes in our
nutrition in the past 10,000 years_ and may or may not be extrapolating a bit
on other points. On another we have Zuk, hellbent at debunking the former's
work, based solely on those arguments. Finally, we have Laura Miller, author
of the article, who feels that Zuk's arguments are justification enough to
dismiss proponents of the paleo diet almost as a fad.

Yes, crickets managed to adapt to their predator in 5 years, but what of the
multiple examples of species that just disappeared, when another was
introduced in their ecosystem? Cordain is probably wrong in some of his
presumptions regarding evolution, but then Zuk just ends up pointing that out
without proving anything of interest herself.

Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is
from the paleolithic? Who cares when it's from? A month ago I had only a vague
idea of when the paleolithic ended. If you asked me I would've said "hmm, 50k
years ago?"

What convinced me was its simplicity and results. I read reports and
testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes performing on it.
Rather than telling me "actually, this isn't quite paleolithic" or "actually,
we did have time to adapt", I would be much more interested in a study that
debunks those reports, or at least attributes them to something else than the
diet.

Also, I've not yet read enough on the diet in details, but from what I've
garnered of its main lines, there are some specific reasons as to why certain
foods should be avoided. How about looking at those arguments and then debunk
them? I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and
legumes.

~~~
nqureshi
>> "I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and
legumes."

>> "I read reports and testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes
performing on it."

I think this is the wrong way round. When people make claims that stuff we've
been eating for thousands of years (bread, cereals, grains etc.) are actually
really bad for us, _the burden of proof is on them_.

If anyone could actually prove that wheat causes weight gain and health
problems (independent of other variables), they'd be a good candidate for the
next Nobel in Medicine.

Most studies I've read show that Paleo is no better or worse than a normal
healthy diet. In some cases e.g. when you're an athlete, it'll be _actively
worse_ , since carbs are a basic source of fuel. [1]

On top of this, Paleo promotes some claims that are _ridiculous_ , e.g. that
burning fat for fuel == burning carbs for fuel. They have totally different
consequences.

Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food.
Loads of calories and not enough exercise means your body stores fat. That's
sort of obvious, and nothing to do with any special properties that 'carbs'
have.

Just eat plenty of vegetables (esp green / strongly coloured ones), and make
sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure
calories in < calories out. That's the general pictures studies give us.

Be extremely sceptical of anything claiming otherwise. I'm not sure why
intelligent people can get so caught up in fads - such as Paleo - that are
backed up by pseudo-science. My theory is that they appeal to the contrarian
in us - after all, they're delightfully counter-intuitive in some ways (eating
lots of steak can be good for me?!).

You've got to have contrarian ideas to be really intelligent, but not all
contrarianism is good.

[1] I say this as a semi-pro runner who has tried running on a Paleo diet and
found it disastrous. You _cannot_ burn fat with the same efficiency as you can
'burn' carbs (i.e. use glycogen). It doesn't work that way. And if you still
think it does, look up the diets of the top 10 athletes in basically any sport
& explain to me why none of them are on Paleo.

~~~
jgj
Paleo is not a "low carb" diet. The point of Paleo is not to reduce the number
of carbohydrates you ingest; nor is it to enter ketosis; nor is the primary
goal of Paleo to lose weight. You have been reading the wrong things, and I
can't even imagine what lead you to believe that you could run at any serious
level without ingesting carbs.

The pop-fad elements of the diet that have been parroted by journalists are
generally the "elevator pitch" version of the diet, not the real 'meat' (pun
so intended).

The main tenets of the diet are to avoid processed and/or high-sugar food,
grains, (non-fermented) legumes, bad fats/oils (especially those from seeds),
and dairy, and to seek out whole foods, fish and lean meats (especially from
ruminants and organs) and good sources of fat (with good omega 3/6 ratio).
Some folks can handle dairy just fine and do so. Some can eat white rice or
white potatos and suffer no ill effects. Those are not outright banned by the
diet. Carbohydrates can come in many forms that are accessible on the diet.

You were lied to, and I'm sorry that you tried to run without eating carbs, I
image that would be unpleasant. But please discontinue spreading
misinformation about Paleo, as it has vast benefits when applied correctly and
in line with your body's needs.

~~~
Goladus
Paleo is a low-carb diet. By consequence rather than design, and it's
certainly not an Atkins/ketosis diet, but the emphasis is on fish, meat and
eggs. If you need to consume a standard ratio of carbs:protein:fat on the
paleo diet you're going to have an oddball variation of what most people do on
paleo and be eating lots and lots of squash, yams, and sweet potatoes.

 _Some folks can handle dairy just fine and do so. Some can eat white rice or
white potatos and suffer no ill effects. Those are not outright banned by the
diet._

Of course they aren't "outright banned" but potatoes and rice are exceptions
to the guidelines.

~~~
VLM
"Paleo is a low-carb diet."

What are you eating and calling it "paleo"? Practically every meal I have ends
with citrus / berries / apples / bananas / etc. Sometimes for breakfast we'll
have some sliced up apples, that's 30 or so grams of carbs right there.
Sometimes an afternoon snack is just a banana or a handful of grapes.

At a typical Atkins level of 20 grams carb per day, I'd be screwed by the time
I'm done eating two apples for breakfast, and I've still got the rest of the
day to go.

I don't think I'm unusual in that I paleo it around maybe 4 parts veg, 4 part
fruit, 1 part meat, and maybe 1 part nuts and "other (possibly non-paleo)
stuff" on a very long term average. I don't think its physically possible to
low carb if you eat about four times as much fruit as meat. Its not so much
that I eat huge amounts of fruit, its that I don't eat so much meat. I ate a
24 oz steak once and literally felt sick, don't know if it was the massive fat
content or some kind of protein overdose or just too much in the belly. Lots
more filet mignon than t-bone, that kind of thing. I tend toward larger
fraction of fruit for breakfast (aka two pieces of fruit per breakfast),
larger fraction of veg for lunch (aka salad bar almost every day) and larger
fraction of meat for dinner and a chunk of fruit before bedtime. Individual
days vary, this is just average.

~~~
Goladus
Diets that include grains typically expect people will get over half of their
calories from carbohydrates. Atkins is the extreme opposite and is virtually a
"no carb" diet as the purpose is to deplete glycogen stores and induce
ketosis.

"4 parts fruit vs 1 part meat and 1 part nuts" doesn't say much because fruits
can have varying amounts of carbohydrates and meats and nuts can have varying
amounts of calorie-dense fat. Also how big is a "part"? Grapes and bananas are
relatively high in sugar but most fruits aren't carbohydrate-dense and even
then, bananas are a genetically modified domestic cultivar and definitely a
product of agriculture. Same with apples.

I'm not sure you realize how aggressive you would have to be to get 1000+
calories per day from fruit and vegetable carbohydrates alone. Almost
certainly, the vast majority of people on the paleo diet do not eat 4 bananas
and 4 apples, a pound of carrots and 2 pounds of spinach every single day.
They eat eggs. They eat almonds. They eat fatty meat. They pour olive oil on
their salad. They wind up with notably less than than the 200-250-ish grams of
carbohydrates that is typical of other diets.

------
stcredzero
_> Cordain, who has a Ph.D in exercise physiology, assured Zuk that human
beings had not had time to adapt to foods that only became staples with the
advent of agriculture. “It’s only been ten thousand years,” he explained.
Zuk’s response: “Plenty of time.”_

We have documented measurable evolution in large mammals in timespans of only
several hundred years.

~~~
wiredfool
What's more, we have evidence that the lactose processing gene has become
widespread in humans in the last 7000 years.

Not to mention the genetic changes that have occurred in the foods over those
times.

~~~
a_bonobo
Here's my new favourite example for this recent evolution, a paper showing
that when we domesticated dogs, their genetic makeup changed to accommodate
for a starch-rich diet as shared with humans.

>The genomic signature of dog domestication reveals adaptation to a starch-
rich diet [1]

>Nineteen of these regions contain genes important in brain function, eight of
which belong to nervous system development pathways and potentially underlie
behavioural changes central to dog domestication6. Ten genes with key roles in
starch digestion and fat metabolism also show signals of selection.

[1]
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/natu...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature11837.html)

------
SoftwareMaven
I don't live a paleo diet[1], but I think the focus on fresh foods is good.
Just like anything, there may be a kernel of extremely important wisdom that
gets surrounded by a huge amount of marketing to make money off of it (think
agile programming as another example).

I also have yet to meet[2] a scientist whose word I would trust as the last
word on the way I should eat. On the other hand, I've met a lot whose words
have influenced how I eat. And based on the reading I've done, we are still so
far from really understanding how the body processes food that the only sane
approach is to read a lot, experiment on yourself, and monitor the results[3].
Unfortunately, there are just far too many people trying to sell something[4]
when it comes to food.

1\. I've settled pretty close to Atkins. In fact, one of the things I _really_
like about Atkins is the "on-going weight loss" phase where you literally
experiment, journal and measure to find out what is working for you.

2\. "Meet" in the "I've read" sense. I'm always looking for more to read on
this topic. Due to lack to good information being available, I passed 350
pounds. It took surgery to have a chance to start again; then a lot of
studying to take advantage of that start.

3\. The scale may be the _worst_ way you can measure your progress. Blood
tests are good. A journal of the way you feel is also good.

4\. It is sad that, even the best intentioned scientists, still need to "sell"
their work to their funding agencies. I don't have a concern than anybody is
outright faking things; the concern I have is that anything that doesn't match
the current dogma as decided by the FDA, USDA, etc, is getting silently thrown
away. Not just "not published", but not even submitted for fear of what a
result that challenges the orthodoxy can do to one's career.

------
svedlin
A few background links on the global decline in human health following the
transition to agriculture around 10 kya:

Post-pleistocene human evolution: bioarchaeology of the agricultural
transition
[http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/poste...](http://www.cast.uark.edu/local/icaes/conferences/wburg/posters/cslarsen/larsen.html)

The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
<http://www.ditext.com/diamond/mistake.html>

Health versus fitness: competing themes in the origins and spread of
agriculture? <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20642145>

On the Early Holocene: Foraging to Early Agriculture
[https://depot.erudit.org/bitstream/002029dd/1/CIRPEE05-02.pd...](https://depot.erudit.org/bitstream/002029dd/1/CIRPEE05-02.pdf)

------
venomsnake
Now I have lost 12 kg for 2 months (114 to 102 on 180cm height) - from just
cutting soda and anything with sugar, and limiting starches to minimum and
eating unlimited amounts of raw nuts, eggs, meat, cheese, olives. I was obese
and now my BMI scaled me into overweight.

There is no relation with the two arguments btw - "People adapt fast" - yeah
but the ability to spike your blood sugar and insulin all day long into the
stratosphere is recent, and because of the modern health system there is no
evolutionary pressure. A guy with type 2 diabetes will have long life. Just
crappy.

I think that every person could build a good diet for themselves following
these rules:

1\. Cut soda unless in the middle of a marathon or a brutal workout

2\. Treat anything with added sugar as dessert and eat it in amounts suitable
for dessert two times a week top.

3\. Don't eat anything that has had its fibers removed.

4\. Always start the meal with a big leafy salad.

5\. Avoid overly processed meat products, products with too much salt and fats
that have gone trough other processing than mechanical/thermal.

------
disbelief
I'm a little confused by the "10,000 years is plenty of time" argument,
particularly when the crickets in Hawaii or lactase persistence examples are
used as evidence. To me, these were relatively minor evolutionary steps. I'd
even go as far as to question whether crickets changing their singing might
not be explained by culture or learned behaviour — at least partly? As for
lactase, is it such a vast leap from drinking mother's milk in infancy to
drinking the milk of other mammals?

Comparing these examples to completely rewiring the human digestive system,
insulin response mechanism, and immune system to deal with digesting and
utilizing foods (refined sugars, grains) in vast quantities which we rarely if
ever encountered before seems like something that might take a bit longer to
evolve.

The argument almost seems to say "evolution has been observed on shorter
timescales, therefore _any_ evolutionary leap is possible on shorter
timescales."

------
dmix
Based on the single review for the book on Amazon and the "15 of 52 found
helpful", this seems to be an inflammatory topic:

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q6XM1A/?tag=saloncom08-20>

I'd be curious to see more scientific reviews of the book first before buying
it.

~~~
tokenadult
The Amazon review is not by someone who is a verified purchaser of the item
under review, nor does the reviewer appear to be, from the reviewer's other
reviews I've quickly glanced at, someone who is deeply familiar with the
science on the subject. So, yes, the topic is inflammatory, but I wouldn't
think less of the book based on a "review" like that. I agree with you that it
would be good to read reviews of the new book by scientists who research those
issues.

(Author Nassim Nicholas Taleb, after noticing that some "reviewers" of his
first book seemed not to have actually read the book, added section headings
in the table of contents of his second book designed to trip up lazy
reviewers. He detected several of those, even among people who review books
for professionally edited publications for mass audiences.)

~~~
dalke
That sounds like an story I would like to read. I couldn't find details about
it. I did find that Taleb's second book for mass audiences was "The Black
Swan", but that knowledge didn't help.

I did find that Taleb is quick critical of poor-quality reviewers, but did not
find something which matches your description. I presume it's described in his
third book?

~~~
tokenadult
Thanks for asking. I'll try a more complicated Google search to track that
down. I see you've already looked at Taleb's website, right?

<http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/>

but he no longer has the same list of stories about reviews of his earlier
books linked there from the home page.

~~~
dalke
Yes, I did. The closest I found was
<http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/fake.htm> . Oh! Perhaps archive.org? Nope.
It's the same.

------
scotty79
"The reason caveman were skinny is that before they could eat meat they had to
chase it for three days and kill it with a stick."

------
lifeisstillgood
One of the things that make me wonder is the idea that there are " diseases if
civilisation" (accepted, look at increases in asthma etc) _and that they are
caused by diet_

Of all the things that exist in the modern world, lead in atmosphere, weird
fungicides in our furniture fire retardants, etc, why is it the one thing that
is under individual control that is the main contributor to our malease - it
seems far too linked to the common "if you are ill / poor then you aren't
trying hard enough" meme that Oprah et al tend to fall for.

Anyway, as a set of nutritional guidelines it seems reasonable, if only
because the avergage food obsessed westerner has aceess to a range of fruit
veg and meat that our ancestors never dreamed of.

Now stop trying to persuade me to agree with you so that I can be saved - it
smacks of religion

~~~
s_baby
I don't see the diet as being universally applicable but the theory behind the
diet is compelling. There's an overlap in risk factors for diabetes, cancer,
and heart disease. There's also an overlap in medications(e.g statins/aspirin
lowering cancer risk. metformin lowering cancer risk). It's possible that all
these diseases share biomolecular cascades.

[http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/09/paleo-diet-inflammation-
metfo...](http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/09/paleo-diet-inflammation-metformin/)

~~~
lifeisstillgood
My skepticism antennae are twitching

Firstly it has the tang of religion - we have found the answer, it requires
certain rites and adherences and we must now persuade you to believe

Secondly it is highly highly unlikely an actual Stone Age person had access to
the range of meat and vegetables currently in wegmans and so the question is
_which_ Stone Age diet? The one where they lived near a lake and had fish, the
one where they had lots of vitamin C rich berries but few fish?

Thirdly evolution is slow but not glacial - 2.6m years is a long time, and
frankly why go back that far and not further? At what point has evolution not
caught up and how does that overlap with 'out of africa'?

Finally and th biggest question to me, is why assume that so many maleases are
solely or primarily diet related. Obesity is pretty obvious but asthma? Cancer
even?

~~~
s_baby
>My skepticism antennae are twitching Firstly it has the tang of religion - we
have found the answer, it requires certain rites and adherences and we must
now persuade you to believe

I'm not sure how any of this addresses the claim that carbohydrates are a
major cause of disease which is the only issue my post addressed.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM>

>Finally and th biggest question to me, is why assume that so many maleases
are solely or primarily diet related. Obesity is pretty obvious but asthma?
Cancer even?

A transitive relationship is being inferred.

There's evidence that cholesterol plaque build-up is driven by inflammation.
There's evidence that many cancers are driven by inflammation. There's
evidence that insulin spikes are involved in bio-molecular cascades for
driving inflammation which are also involved in diabetes. Therefore
carbohydrates are involved in inflammation which predisposes a person to
cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. Proving anything beyond doubt in biology
is difficult but it's a compelling hypothesis that needs further
investigation.

------
Evgeny
I've recently came to the conclusion that the Paleo diet is beneficial for me
not because it tells me what to eat. No, it's because it tells me exactly what
not to eat.

 _With respect to what people ate (especially how much meat), the only safe
assumption was “whatever they could get,” something that to this day varies
greatly depending on where they live._

Precisely. I can not tell exactly what and how much they could get, but I can
know for sure what they could not get, regardless of where they lived, under
any conditions:

\- Sugar

\- White bread

\- Vegetable oils

\- Soft drinks

\- Any kind of packaged food

\- Any kind of industrially processed food

etc.

For the rest - yes, one should be free to eat as much as they want vegetables,
fruit, meat, fish, fresh nuts, berries etc ...

~~~
dalke
What about all of the exceptions?

Can you eat corn (domesticated some 9,000 years ago), sugar cane (8,000), or
bananas (8,000) Wild almonds are toxic, but safe domesticated varieties
started appearing some 5,000 years ago. Also, macadamia nuts have a similar
problem, and they were domesticated only some 200 years ago.

What about strawberries? Wild strawberries are edible, but tiny. It wasn't
until about the 1400s that we started breeding them for size. Cabbage,
broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts, savoy, and Chinese kale are
cultivars of Brassica oleracea, but no one 10,000 years ago would have been
able to get them.

Olives are treated to make them less bitter. Is curing or fermenting
permissible, or does one eat only the olives which can be eaten without
processing? When does the food become too processed?

By your logic, you've given up on coffee, chocolate, and alcohol, right? No
paleolithic person ever tasted a drop of whiskey.

I'm not saying that moderation or abstinence in the foods you list is a bad
thing, only commenting that the logic behind it would preclude eating or
drinking certain vegetables, fruits, nuts, and berries which were not
available 10,000+ years ago.

~~~
Evgeny
_What about all of the exceptions?_

The general approach to exceptions is that exceptions exist and yes, it is
impossible to eat 100% foods that the paleolithic man ate. Obviously even
modern cows or pigs did not exist 20K years ago. And one can argue that wild
fish / game is also not the same cause they evolved somewhat. So, the approach
is that while the ideal is 100%, the real goal is not to reach it, but to
gradually come closer.

I.e. eliminating sugars, white bread, sodas, vegetable oils is probably
already ~70% of the way or more.

 _Olives are treated to make them less bitter. Is curing or fermenting
permissible, or does one eat only the olives which can be eaten without
processing?_

Well, my personal approach is that fresh/cooked is OK, and then, the more
processing is done, the farther we are away from ideal. So, along the lines of
fruit > fresh fruit juice > reconstituted fruit juice > fruit drink > water
with dissolved fructose. That's not "scientific" and I'm not aiming to prove
it.

 _By your logic, you've given up on coffee, chocolate, and alcohol, right? No
paleolithic person ever tasted a drop of whiskey._

That would be ideal, though I haven't reached that point yet. I'm not even
sure I will seriously try to eliminate all those by 100% - but any reduction
will be beneficial.

~~~
dalke
It seems then that your scale is not what people of the paleo era could get
(in an abstract sense, because until 500 years ago, no one on the planet could
have had a slice of tomato with a leaf of basil on top), but rather that you
want to minimize the number of processing steps involved in the food you eat.

That latter goal is much easier for me to understand, and even support, though
I wonder if corn, being the result of 5,000 years of directed evolution, is
more processed than beer.

Take for example alcohol. There's good genetic evidence that humans have
evolved to better handle alcohol. Eg, "The studies on human ADH (alcohol
dehydrogenase) gene have suggested Darwinian positive selection on the genetic
variation of ADH1B His47 [52–54]. Alcohol consumption is a recent agriculture-
related life style, and the adaptive selection has begun about 10 Kya"
<http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijeb/2011/484769/>

During the Babylonian era, "a daily ration of beer was provided for all
citizens, the amount depending on one's social status" and "it was sometimes
used to pay workers as part of their daily wages." During the Middle Ages it
was safer to drink than water.

And that's the point of the linked-to criticism - 20,000 years is long enough
that our genetics are different than humans of the same era. We've evolved to
better handle starch, to better handle drinking milk as an adult, and to drink
alcohol.

To choose a paleo diet on the belief that it better fits our genetics sounds
like it denies the evidence that our genetics have changed since then.

------
Uchikoma
There are two things at work: Paleo diet works (not much disputed here) and
Paleo diet works because it's like what we ate 10k years ago and we haven't
adopted to our "new food" yet (a lot of people dispute that).

~~~
VLM
1+2 are good. Also:

3\. Abundance. People didn't have to "limit themselves" 2000 years ago because
they either were usually, or at best occasionally, starving back down to size,
along with massive vitamin and mineral deficiencies (so you can eat 3000
calories per day as a sailor, but if you're also simultaneously dying of
scurvy, they you don't have to worry so much about getting fat). In the
shorter term, religious fasting seems to have died out although oddly enough
we keep religious feast traditions alive pretty well. Also gluttony seems to
have disappeared from the list of sins. Someone who wanted to eat until 400
pounds 2500 years ago could want all they want for free, but they simply
aren't getting the food to do it, so... hungry and skinny even if their
internal weight thermostat says 400 pounds is a great goal. No caloric intake
limit for an entire lifetime in 2010s America.

4\. Non-ag lifestyle beginning a century or so ago has lead to weird ideas
about our diet, so "rediscovering" what farmers have always known seems new.
So 98% of the population doesn't farm. People discover corn products can be
yummy and start exploding waistlines. The 2% of the population who farm are
like "duh, everyone knows corn is the best way to fatten up hogs and other
mammal livestock, duh!" but we don't respect farming as a profession so we
need scientists to "discover" hmm corn consumption seems to positively
correlate with waistline, how curious I wonder if cutting back on corn would
help obesity... naah the corn industry lobbiests would kill me if I said
that... Pretty much if farmers slop the hogs with it to fatten them up, you
probably don't want to eat that unless you need fattening up.

~~~
Uchikoma
+1 "but we don't respect farming as a profession"

------
jib
Does it matter that much if it is correct or not? Some amount of people are
eating healthier because of it. That's a good thing, right? Whether that is
due to a link to history or coincidence it seems like a good thing.

To me "is it doing something we know is bad" seems like something that would
be useful to know. I don't care so much about "is it historically correct".
I'd gladly trade that for even 100 people eating better. Pragmatically, it
seems like a decent diet, so let's figure out how to get more people to eat
healthier instead?

------
randomsearch
I'm pretty new to this paleo idea.

If I get this right, the idea is that we can't be adapted for a diet that
changed only recently, so therefore we should eat the diet we are likely to be
more adapted to. So this kind of makes sense, in a "sounds reasonable" way.

It's certainly true that switching to a system of agriculture resulted in a
drop in nutritional health, _in the short term_.

But, equally, what about the argument that goes: when we used to eat this
diet, we died a lot younger than now. ok, they were lots of reasons for that,
but we died a _lot_ younger, so it's not unreasonable to imagine that diet was
part of the cause.

Both arguments seem reasonable without being rigorous. I don't see why you'd
choose one over the other.

Having had friends who studied nutrition at a top UK university, and read a
bit about it myself, it seems to me that we know very little about nutrition
in general. The best advice appears to be "eat a well-rounded diet with plenty
of fresh fruit and veg, and don't eat too much junk food."

The idea of switching to something as radically different as a paleo diet,
compared to what we've been eating for thousands of years, without a full
scientific understanding of what is best, seems a bit reckless to me. I think
the burden of proof lies heavily on the paleo side. And that requires not just
a handful of empirical studies; I read a bit about one of these studies [1],
and was not well executed - it didn't even use a control group. People
adopting the diet without substantial evidence in its favour might be gambling
with their health.

Anyone recommend good books on the topic? I'd like to read more.

[1] Effects of a short-term intervention with a paleolithic diet in healthy
volunteers. Osterdahl M, Kocturk T, Koochek A, Wändell PE.

------
Tichy
"the fossil record of the Stone Age is so small and necessarily incomplete
that its ability to tell us about paleolithic society is severely limited."

Actually there are still people who live as hunter-gatherers, or there were
until a couple of years ago, and that is where a lot of the information comes
from. It was also possible to watch what happened when such people entered
civilization. There also apparently is a marked difference in the fossil
record concerning health of hunter-gatherers vs agricultural societies.

I just read "The World Until Yesterday" by Jared Diamond, and he also touches
on some of those health problems. Western people are actually less afflicted
by them than those hunter-gatherers who entered 'civilization' in their
lifetimes, so Diamond also says that Western people probably already evolved
to some degree to deal better with the abundance of grains, salt and sugar.

That doesn't imply we are already perfectly adapted, though, especially if
some diseases clearly don't seem to be prevalent in traditional societies.

Unfortunately he isn't very specific about the traditional diets, for example,
and trying to look up paleo diets it seems to me a lot of time they are mostly
an excuse to eat lots of meat and many books are not that well researched. In
Diamond's books he mentions that many tribes actually ate mostly starches and
meat only on special occasions - unfortunately he didn't mention the actual
frequency, or I missed reading that (once a week? a month?). Also obviously
humans adapted to lots of different environments, there are probably tribes
who ate 100% meat, too (like in arctic regions where nothing grows?) - so
maybe you can take your pick, or you just have to experiment...

That lactose tolerance seems to have increased fitness a lot certainly makes
me wary of just accepting "pure paleo" as the best path.

------
jclos
I don't care for magic diets but if it stops people from eating non-
nutritional, processed garbage then I'm all for it.

------
kiba
Interesting review and idea, although I have no idea if it's true. Makes me
wonder what other area of knowledge that is filled with garbage.

I note that my programming skill(in term of producing tangle results) and
mathematics are probably the only thing I trust in absolutely.

~~~
a_bonobo
The problem with the "paleo-diet" is that it's not really an area of knowledge
(like for example, plant evolutionary biology). Judging from the published
studies it looks like proponents of the diet make up the plans and then
studies by actual scientists later confirm some of the positive (and negative)
benefits.

There are some scientific studies on the "paleo-diet" as an actual dietary
plan, searching pubmed for "paleo-diet", "paleo diet" or "paleolithic diet"
reveals 77 results, a few of which are concerned with how modern man might
benefit of an old diet. Some of the published stuff is positive about paleo:

<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21139123>

> Furthermore, doubts have been raised about the necessity for very low levels
> of protein, fat, and cholesterol intake common in official recommendations.
> Most impressively, randomized controlled trials have begun to confirm the
> value of hunter-gatherer diets in some high-risk groups, even as compared
> with routinely recommended diets.

It also seems to be good for sufferers of Diabetes Type II:
<http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20144375>

So it seems that the usual recommendations for nourishment and sports (that's
always good) are pretty good, but the evolutionary science behind it is quite
hokum.

A lot of this knowledge that has been published outside of academic circles in
books is slightly contradictory and is, in the worst case, broscience [1]. The
wiki-page for this diet has some great points:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic_diet>

[1] <http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=broscience>

------
awolf
Zuk is attacking a straw man here. Thinking about our diets from an
evolutionary perspective gives us a framework in which to form educated
hypotheses. The way an intelligent person applies paleo-based thinking is by
forming theories, not by creating an absolutist belief system. Zuk does
nothing to invalidate the application data we have about the past in a logical
fashion.

If Zuk's point is that some people are applying evolutionary concepts blindly
without verifying results or considering evidence, then her book title should
have been: "Some People Are Stupid" and left it at that. If she wants to
launch a counter to the paleo movement then I think she's fallen flat on her
face.

~~~
jacalata
To repeat myself from earlier: If you object to people rebutting this 'straw
man', then perhaps you should try and stop people from proposing it. You can't
call something a straw man simply because it's not what you personally mean by
the word.

~~~
awolf
Right, let me go do that. While I'm at it I'll make sure everyone who Googles
"healthy diet" or for that matter "republican", all come away learning exactly
the same meanings for those terms.

My point in the above post was: Zuk is positioning herself as if she were
attacking Paleo as a concept, but all she's really attacking is the mis-
application of information by some members in a larger group. I call that a
straw man.

~~~
simonster
I haven't read the book, but the review made it sound like Zuk was both
attacking Paleo as a concept by pointing out that evolution can actually
happen on pretty short timescales and so the idea that we need to eat what
paleolithic people ate is logically flawed, and also attacking Paleo as
practiced by pointing out its practitioners' misconceptions regarding the diet
of paleolithic humans.

~~~
jamesrcole
Just because evolution of certain details can happen on short timescales does
not therefore mean that evolution can or does make any old change in a short
timeframe.

Evolution tends to operate as a hill-climbing strategy (not to say it cant
clear away exising design details) so it often produce (non-fatal) 'bugs' in
its designs that never get fixed.

------
jiggy2011
I know people who claim that eating a mainly paleo diet makes them feel
better.

Though I am tempted to think it is less to do with removing diary , pasta etc
and more to do with them actually eating some damn vegetables now.

~~~
DanBC
There are people who claim that homeopathy cured their cancer.

This is exactly the kind of bias that rational people should be scared of.
This is exactly the kind of thing that we have double blind controlled studies
to eliminate.

EDIT: Because if you do something, and it makes you feel good, well - that's
fine. But don't go around telling other people that they're wrong and doing
harm to themselves by not doing this thing.

------
ricardobeat
Where's the science?

~~~
s_baby
[http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/09/paleo-diet-inflammation-
metfo...](http://robbwolf.com/2012/03/09/paleo-diet-inflammation-metformin/)

~~~
mbq
Doesn't seem science.

------
oelmekki
I'm not a evolution scientist, so I would love to have some educated response
to that :

Now that we are over 6 billion humans on earth, with migration way easier and
common place than before, shouldn't on the contrary human evolution been
speeded up ?

EDIT : I know evolution is not progressive but happen by sudden steps, but I
suppose it still stands.

~~~
lutusp
> Now that we are over 6 billion humans on earth, with migration way easier
> and common place than before, shouldn't on the contrary human evolution been
> speeded up ?

Evolution speeds up as a result of either an increased natural mutation rate
or extreme environmental challenges (lots of death produced by unfitness) --
or both. But we're not seeing either in modern times.

> EDIT : I know evolution is not progressive but happen by sudden steps ...

No, this isn't true as a rule. In evolutionary theory, the overall rate of
change,and the presence or absence of abrupt changes, is entirely dependent on
what produces greater fitness. In other words, the rate at which evolution
happens, and the shape of the change curve, are themselves driven by
considerations of fitness and natural selection.

------
defen
I agree that 10,000 years is sufficient time for evolution to affect the human
genome. But the "diseases of civilization" that paleo worries about (cancer,
heart disease, type 2 diabetes, etc) tend to kick in at 50+, don't they? So it
seems like evolution's ability to influence those would be limited, at best.

------
CleanedStar
"It is striking how fixated on the alleged behavior of our hunting-and-
foraging forbearers some educated inhabitants of the developed world have
become....happier and healthier if we lived like 'cavemen'"

The posters on this web site who are not part of the "1%" are often at the top
of the middle class under the 1%...white, male, American, educated at college
in CS, living in nice metropolitan areas in the US. What kind of work hours do
we often see posted here? 50, 60, 70 hour weeks, or more. I know, I have done
so myself - working for a Fortune 100 company. Imagine what hours a truck
driver, or a Bangladeshi factory worker works, or some Chinese factory worker
making iPads.

In Marshall Sahlins "The Original Affluent Society" he looked at how much the
still existing hunter-gatherers in places like Africa worked, and did research
trying to figure out what was the case 20 thousand, 30 thousand years ago. It
seems hunter-gatherers often work less hours than many of the people on this
site do, or truck drivers do, or Chinese factory workers do, or a lot of
people do.

They also have no rent payments to make and the like. Hunter-gatherers,
pastoral tribes and farmers tend to have to get forced more or less by
gunpoint to the cities, including in our modern day. Why should the rural
Mexican farm laborers forced off their farms by "NAFTA" come to modern
America, because the unemployment rate is no longer above the 1984-2009 high
like it was last month?

As the desire of the current hegemony is to pretty much ignore history
completely, of course any people who look at history from ancient history to
now, you want to paint them as loonies. This writer sounds like one of the
apes in Planet of the Apes deriding people who want to go to the forbidden
zone. And sure, it's easy to deride anyone curious about history, the economy,
politics and so forth, and to say anyone interested in that old stuff is some
Berkeley hippie eating the latest fad diet. She's the secular equivalent of
the Christian fundamentalists who say the world was created in 4004 BC.

A new thing was introduced into the world 10000 years ago alongside farming -
slavery. Read the Epic of Gilgamesh, or the bible, or modern anthropology. The
"left"/"post-left" investigation of these things is mostly serious. But if
Salon sees fit to point to a few wingbat hippies eating some faddish diet as a
way to paint the whole study with a brush, well, I'm not surprised the website
John Warnock and William Hambrecht bankroll is doing that.

------
kahawe
Reading about any type of nutrition research has become beyond frustrating to
me.

There are constantly new results doing away with old truisms only to have
those results, in turn, questioned and overturned by other studies and then
there are basically opposing theories being found as valid, too. To make
matters worse, there is an overwhelming abundance of less-than-scientific
literature following the latest "fad" scientific results, plugging some diet
"silver bullets" and to top it off, most "professionals" in that area are
nothing but gym rats that payed lots of money for some training on a specific
diet fad and then that is the only thing they will in turn plug to their
customers. And the actual professionals, as in doctors, well mostly they
appear to not be up-to-date with the latest-and-greatest "proven" theories so
I always feel like I am missing out some of the good stuff that the latest
fads are promising me.

All I wanted was a REALLY, actually healthy diet. Do I eat mostly wholemeal
bread and rice as is common where I am from? Paleo and Atkins tells me this is
literally poisoning and destroying my body and THE worst thing I could do next
to shooting myself in the stomach. So only lots of fat, meat and vegetables?
But "everyone knows" lots of meat is bad and one should only eat meat maybe
twice a week, says the official generals statement here. Of course there are
the different shades of vegetarians and vegans who all have discovered the one
truth and the ONLY ethically correct way of living and they have the studies
to back them up on the "healthy" side but e.g. the legumes they are eating are
supposed to be literally poison according to the paleo crowd... yet beans are
healthy, says another group, also backed by studies. Oh and fish, we all
should eat more fish right? Yet we keep hearing how polluted the oceans are
and how fish are full of mercury and probably nuclear waste from dumping it
into the north sea. And I could go on and on and on....

For practically each diet recommendation or "fad" backed by studies you can
easily find at least one opposite or contradicting study and at least two
other, even more "true" and new diet fads.

Ultimately, this means I have no idea what I should actually, really really be
eating and it leads me to the conclusion that: diet and health are the
educated masses' modern equivalent to religion. Everyone is following their
one true savior and will launch into borderline religious flame wars against
the "infidels" of the other fads and theories.

Yet actually definitive answers seem to be missing.

And I am sorry if this seems like an incoherent rant, somehow it is, but I
assure you with all the best intentions. Maybe it is just the tech inside me
that wants a clear and definitive answer.

~~~
jre
I share your sentiment of frustration. I've read "The China Study" by Campbell
and various other articles about paleo-diet and others and there is a lot of
contradictory informations.

Although they go in opposite directions (Campbell advocates vegan, paleo
meat), they seem to agree on at least one thing : unprocessed foods are
better. Eat vegetables, fruits, whole grains and meat/fish, but avoid
sauces/butter, sodas, white bread and various candies.

------
timmm
Yep eating natural food is all bs.

Please go back to your regular diet of ice-cream and cheetos.

~~~
bigiain
There's a wide gap between a "paleo diet" and modern junk food.

One of my local science broadcasters[1] often uses the phrase "don't eat too
much of anything your grandmother wouldn't recognise as food" - and I suspect
that's pretty much the same good advice as the paleo movement's, the marginal
difference health-wise between eating common 1950/1960s food attempting to re-
create some idea of paleo diet is almost certainly tiny.

High fat/sugar/salt junk food, high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated
vegetable oil - there's no doubt that they shouldn't form the basis of your
diet. But the paleo movements arguments against agricultural societies grain-
heavy diet, with it's several thousand year ongoing trial, doesn't seem to be
quite so real.

[1] Karl Kruszelnicki - <http://www.drkarl.com/home/> Another one of his
food/diet related phrases is "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

~~~
kleinsch
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." is a Michael Pollan quote. Definitely
recommend his books if you're interested in nutrition.

~~~
com2kid
The funny part here being that with Paleo, this becomes

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly meat."

~~~
graeme
Depends on what you mean by mostly. If the quotes are meant calorie wise, then
there is disagreement.

If the quotes refer to volume, then they agree. Most paleo authorities say
that plants should fill most of the plate.

Anyone know what Pollan meant?

~~~
dsirijus
In the spirit of the simplicity of the quote, I'd bet on volume.

------
juskrey
I am really stunned, how rigorously people protect their right to disease,
premature aging and unnatural death. Do not question so called fruits of
progress but require immediate proofs of mechanisms that have successfully
worked for millions of years.

~~~
rbanffy
Because, of course, we know cavemen had very long lives.

~~~
juskrey
Of course, we know the difference between arithmetic average and life
expectancy upon achieving some age, do we?

~~~
rbanffy
You do understand there is no proof eating like a caveman (table manners
excepted) will prolong your life. At least not unless your alternative is the
suicidal diet many people have.

Also, the argument based on evolution and selection is ludicrous. We have not
stopped evolution.

I strongly suggest you ingest more fiber and avoid sugar, but I also remind
you the plural of "anecdote" is not "evidence".

