
The Argument Against Cereal Grains - unignorant
http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/6/23/the-argument-against-cereal-grains.html
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djehuty
Humans haven't stopped evolving in the 8000 years since grains were
cultivated. It would seem logical that changes allowing grains to form an
effective part of the diet would have occurred. Take the example of milk -
humans in heavy cattle dependent parts of the world (ie: most everywhere
except north east asia) produce enzymes allowing its digestion into adulthood.
So can we now digest grain effectively?

For comparison: a mutation in one gene giving a 1% increase in survival chance
will reach 50% saturation in a population in an average of 100 generations.
For humans that's 2500 years or so.

What I'm saying is that if you _don't_ have a genetic disposition to gluten
intolerance you're likely to be perfectly ok with grain.

~~~
xiaoma
That's an excellent point. In fact, the rate of human evolution is hundreds,
possibly even a thousand times faster than it was in paleolithic times. Less
than 15,000 years ago, _nobody_ had lactose tolerance or blue eyes as an
adult. Now, lactose tolerance is the norm and blue eyes are no longer
uncommon.

[http://www.dailytech.com/Life+in+the+Fastlane+Human+Evolutio...](http://www.dailytech.com/Life+in+the+Fastlane+Human+Evolution+Accelerating/article10003.htm)

~~~
electromagnetic
IIRC lactose tolerance is only believed to have become endemic since about
8000 years ago, incidentally right around when agriculture hit the big time.

I wonder if the control of pasture lands necessitated the higher calorific
quantity an animal provides when it is milked. Less herd land means a farmer
would need to extract more calories per animal to survive. Similarly less
migration also means less danger and higher populations, which again require
more calories per animal to sustain.

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cromulent
"All plants tend to be in a contest with predators who might consume them."

I think the opposite is true in the age of agriculture. Your plant genes will
propagate if McDonalds likes you in their buns.

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patio11
Some of the most sophisticated bits of agriculture are devoted to resisting
common predators (especially insects), making it easier to kill the
predators/pests without killing the crop, etc.

Monsanto wouldn't be a bazillion dollar company if their GMO tomatoes were,
like, really really redder than regular tomatoes.

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fnid2
I've been on a kick lately to plant a garden and studying permaculture. The
argument permaculturists make is that in a diverse ecosystem, like a forest,
everything is in balance, so pests are not as big a problem. For example, a
permaculture garden would have chickens on it to eat the fly larva before they
can infest the crops. With permaculture, there is no need for Monsanto.

In _monocultures_ , i.e. traditional farms, the tilling exposes the worms to
the sun and birds and they are killed. Without worms, there is no life in the
soil and the nutrients must be replaced by petrol based fertilizers. With
permaculture, there is no need for fertilizer because the plants die and are
composted and returned to the soil.

Anyway, point being, if we never used these companies' products to destroy the
natural order of things, we'd have more productive land and no need to GMO
tomatoes.

I don't mean to be preachy. I just discovered permaculture within the past
week or so and it really _meshes_ with my hacker mind. The gardening world
calls permaculturists "geeks" as well. If you're looking into gardening or
sustainability, check out permaculture.

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HeyLaughingBoy
Rephrase that to "pests are not as big a problem for the _remaining_ plants"
because the ones that had a problem with pests are dead!

I don't like monocultures either, but I can assure you that adding chickens
directly to your garden won't help much: they'll eat your tender young plants
in addition to the pests. But their manure is excellent fertilizer: my
potatoes were huge last year.

However, I do take issue with the statement that "we'd have more productive
land..." We wouldn't: compare "natural" farming anywhere in the world with the
US approach of modern fertilizers and soil management techniques (annual
tilling is frowned upon for a number of reasons) and, yes, GM plants and the
yields are incomparable. There are a lot of things to be said against
Monsanto, et al, but lower crop yield isn't one of them. Farmers aren't
stupid: growing food is an expensive and unpredictable business and they'll
take what advantages they can get.

~~~
fnid2
The chicken example was concerning the cycle of flies in fruit trees. You're
right, they will eat anything people will eat, including your lovely garden.
But companion planting, like marigolds in tomatoes is also a permaculture
design principle. Wormwood, the stuff in absinthe, is also good for chickens
to keep away some parasites.

For anyone interested, it's definitely more complicated than I'm describing
here (but not by much). Go to a video search site like bing or google and
search for _permaculture_ and filter by videos longer than 20 minutes. There's
a _wealth_ of information on it. Look for stuff about about Forest Gardens.
There are several videos about Sepp Holzer in Austria who grows everything you
can imagine. Really spectacular stuff!

As sethg said, by "more productive" I mean more food per acre. I've heard with
permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre. The reason is because you
have nut trees at the top, fruit trees below that, followed by bushes,
herbaceous, root plants, then vines and climbers spread throughout.

In a monoculture, you have just _one_ layer of productivity: a field of
potatoes with no trees. An apple orchard with no herbaceous plants or vines.
It's like a web server at 15% capacity. Permaculture is to agriculture what
virtualization is to I.T. Infrastructure.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
* I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre*

I'd be surprised it it wasn't even more than that if done carefully! You're
right that by mixing plant types, you can achieve better density and get a
synergistic effect (another example is planting garlic/onions next to potatoes
to repel potato bugs). One problem with large commercial farms is that in
order to reduce the labor needs you have to plant at a density that makes it
easier for mechanized equipment to harvest and that means that you must
generally separate crops.

I have seen research projects that used robots to plant seedlings: typically a
very labor intensive task. I'm thinking that if you could build robots/smarter
machines that could harvest a wide variety of crops instead of just e.g, what
a combine can process, then greater density & improved crop mix could be
achieved.

I've always enjoyed food gardening and more recently I've been thinking of
ways to apply technology to large gardens/small farm plots to reduce the
dependence on my very limited free time. The problem is that now my free time
would be shifted from gardening to robotics research :-)

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sethg
The author argues that “Fully 1% of the population has celiac disease, with
97% of these currently undiagnosed” as one of his arguments against eating
gluten-containing cereal grains, but he is much less concerned about dairy
products, even though lactose intolerance is _far_ more prevalent¹, especially
among non-whites, than celiac.

¹see <http://www.aafp.org/afp/2002/0501/p1845.html>

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Xodarap
"...it has been qualified as a fad diet by the National Health Service of
England and American Dietetic Association."

"A criticized 3 week trial with the Paleolithic diet, in 20 healthy volunteers
of which 6 dropped out and only 6 of the remaining had complete dietary
information available, showed variable results. During the trial calorie
consumption decreased 36% leading to significant weight loss. However, adverse
changes in serum calcium were observed.[147] The NHS Knowledge Service states
that there are several limitations to this particular study and that "readers
should not draw too many conclusions from it."[148] Also, the Halford Watch
refers to this study as "bad science".[149]"

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_diet>

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shalmanese
The author makes some good points but... cereal grains are delicious...

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electromagnetic
You can't beat a Duracell AA made with real genuine corn products, it just
wouldn't be the same if they replaced the cereal calories with beef drippings.

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msluyter
I stopped eating wheat entirely on Jan 1, as well as most other grains, lost
25 lbs effortlessly, energy shot up, and my LDL cholesterol dropped
precipitously. Though I now am sold on the notion that grains are simply
nature's way of making you fat, some of the paleo folks go to opposite
extremes. For example, IIRC, Dr. Harris (of the paleonu blog above) recommends
heavy cream in your coffee. Perhaps this is ok, heartwise, but I think the
jury is still out on the long term effects of saturated fat (cancer, etc...)

~~~
xiaoma
That's an interesting anecdote. I know a number of Japanese who moved to the
US for school, stayed the same weight for a while, but then gained 10+ kilos
of fat when they _stopped_ eating rice or noodles every day for breakfast,
lunch and dinner. Clearly, some of the worlds longest lived people (Japan #1,
HK #2) do very well on diets with a far larger portion of their calories
coming from grains than the typical American or English diet.

This isn't to say that there aren't any heavy meat-eaters, or especially fish-
eaters in the world who remain healthy. But on the whole, meat consumption is
strongly correlated with lifestyle diseases and shorter lifespans, when
comparing populations of similar wealth.

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msluyter
It's unclear to me how you arrive at the conclusion that the Japanese eat a
far larger portion of grains than the standard american diet. I'd like to see
some clear statistics on that. One thing I've read is that americans simply
eat more calories, period, which would help account for your anecdotal
observations.

Furthermore, it may be that the Japanese diet has a number of healthy side
effects that counteract their rice consumption: seaweed, high omega-3's in
fish, natto (source of K2), etc... Country by country comparisons are famously
problematic (see "Good Calories, Bad Calories") because there are so many
variables to consider.

Finally, I'm not suggesting "eliminate grains and eat more meat," rather
"eliminate grains and eat more vegetables."

~~~
xiaoma
I have read the statistics before-- in the 70's 70% of their calories came
from rice alone, and even now, nearly half their calories come from rice and
over 70% from carbohydrates in general.

I've also lived with several Japanese people. A bowl of rice is eaten at
almost every single meal, including breakfast. It is true that the diet has
become westernized and meat and fat consumption have gone up in the past 40
years... but so have their rates of heart disease and diabetes.

I don't have as much familiarity with HK diets, but they are also eat rice,
noodles or dumplings at almost every meal, and eat less meat, and dairy than
Americans. Having lived most my adult life in Taiwan, I can say with absolute
certainty that from this side of the world, the US diet looks absurdly high in
meat and junk food and severely lacking in whole grains, vegetables and fiber.

Edit: It's also uncommon for people here to _worry_ about adding more protein
and more meat to their diets like people in English speaking countries do.
It's not even on the radar.

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nickpp
It's hard to take seriously a diet that says:

"2. Start eating proper fats - Use healthy animal fats or coconut fat to
substitute fat calories for carbohydrate calories that formerly came from
sugar and flour. Drink whole cream or coconut milk."

Now I am not a big fan of cereals myself (I prefer greens) but to push animal
fat...

I would really like some serious studies for the Paleo fad. I strongly believe
it will have some disastrous effect on the long term. Kinda' like Atkins had.

~~~
nickpp
For a good lauch, read the dude's meal plan:

[http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/11/13/what-i-
eat.htm...](http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/11/13/what-i-eat.html)

I would LOVE to know about the state of his arteries in about 10 to 15 years.

~~~
xiaoma
His arteries will probably be like those of many other heavy meat-eaters, but
it's not his arteries that concern me. Check out his response to the 3rd
commenter on that page, who mentioned that her son doesn't follow the paleo
fad diet:

 _"Your son, do you light his cigarettes for him, too? I am a nazi about not
having bread in the house- maybe that's stupid but the only poison I'll supply
to guests is whisky and wine."_

It's one thing to be a fringe nut-case who rejects the empirical findings of
mainstream dietary research, but imposing the same on one's children is very
disturbing.

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bigtech
Billions of healthy, lean, long-lived Asians might be surprised to hear that
rice is bad for them.

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pw0ncakes
My uninformed stance: Eating grains is good, in moderation. Having about half
of your calories come from corn (as is the case for most people in the US) is
not good. Using corn syrup instead of sugar as a sweetener is not good.

Diversity good. Monoculture bad. For soil and for the body.

For the individual, the early (grain-based) agricultural diet was starkly
inferior to that of the hunter-gatherer. Once the population gets to a certain
point, people have to adopt agriculture; the alternative is fishing/hunting
the available stock into extinction, and then starving. However, agriculture
can support a larger population, by about an order of magnitude. Having 10
times as many people, in mediocre health, won out.

~~~
gcb
he tries to arge that now we can have 10x in good health.

But i fail to see too much science there... I will continue eating all grains,
except corn and soy.

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pw0ncakes
Grains have their place, as a source of complex carbohydrate calories. They're
low on nutrition, but high on calories, and as long as one understands this
(useful) purpose I don't see a problem. Calories are necessary, to a point.
Throughout much of history, high energetic content was an advantage. Medieval
peasants ate 2-3 times as many calories as we eat today, because they worked
them off in the fields.

Especially now, it wouldn't be healthy to eat 2000 calories/day in red meat or
fish, much less 5-6000. It's not really possible to eat that many calories'
worth of blueberries. This is where staple crops come in.

Of course, no one who is food-conscious should be eating _refined_ grains such
as white bread, because those are essentially pure sugar.

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perpetuity
oh you mean Atkins Diet!

I do believe various humans account for various needed best diets. Simply
because our lineage is all a little different. Some people come from the first
farmers who were probably harvesting some type of cereal crop. Others come
from nomads or hunters...

Just don't be fooled into thinking there is one "diet" to fit everyone.

