"Debunking" the Paleo Diet

Before I start this post is more about why it's impossible to strictly follow the paleo diet and why I don't think that grains and legumes are "evil". If you feel better avoiding grains and eating more meat then do whatever you're doing. I just don't think that EVERYONE needs to stop eating grains to be healthy.

On Friday I was on another TEDx talk roll and came upon Dr. Christina Warinner's speech. She's an archaeologist and talked about how we can't technically truly eat paleo. I'd highly suggest watching the 9:50-14:00 minutes of her speech, the rest is not very interesting.

Basically what she says is that caveman ate local food, whatever was in season, and it different on where the caveman lived. The thing is, what most people present as paleo food nowadays would not have been something that caveman have eaten.

Source

Just take a look at one of the first things that pop-up when searching "paleo breakfast". A caveman would never eat this because avocados and tomatoes don't grow in the same place and a caveman always ate locally. 

At the same time, tomatoes never existed in the caveman period and were actually filled with toxins. Through agriculture we were able to genetically modify them to favor the genetic pool of the non-toxic tomatoes. Same idea with bananas, in the caveman period bananas used to be barely edible because they contained massive seeds. Humans have genetically modified bananas over thousands of years to be devoid of seeds.

Dr. Warinner talks about a bunch of examples like this including broccoli, carrots, and so on. The truth is that everything we eat right now is GMO. That means that through agriculture we have picked out the seeds of which crop we want to plant and thus propagate its genetic information. Over time, humans have selected for our food to contain specific genes that make the food more edible to us. We have evolved our food and we have evolved alongside with it.

So would you say that carrots aren't paleo? They are a product of agriculture...

Now the other thing is that caveman were actually found to consume some grains and legumes. Recently papers in PNAS and Science (big reputable science journals) have shown remains of grains in the teeth of caveman. Yup! Honestly, caveman didn't have much choice of what to eat so they probably ate everything they could get their hands on.

What I really can't understand about the paleo diet is why people seem to think that caveman were healthy... I mean their life expectancy was like what, 18 years? Were they actually able to get all their nutrients and calories with the way that they ate? You can say that they didn't have cancer as frequently but lets be honest, most people get cancer after their 40s. Caveman never lived long enough to develop them in the first place. 

I also don't get why agriculture is blamed for out expending waistlines. People have started ballooning in the last little while, not 10, 000 years ago. Look back at pictures 100 years, no like 30 years ago, people were skinny. People have gotten fat because of processed food not necessarily because of legumes and grains. 

Soure. Obesity is a recent epidemic, not one that began when we started eating grains.

Now grains and legumes. You can read this article if you're interested and it gives a heck a lot of information about why grains are super healthy. I mean, why else would we continue to cultivate grains for thousands of years. We started eating junk food maybe 30 years ago and we've already noticed the decline in our health. If grains were truly unhealthy, why would we continue eating them... Grains and legumes are filled with nutrients, vitamins, fiber, and some protein. If you ever study metabolism, you will notice that it revolves around carbs. Our bodies were designed to process carbs, they're the easiest to digest and the easiest to metabolize. 

Chart showing percentage of obese people. Wow American has twice as much obese people as Canada, interesting. Anyways, take a look at where the Carb/ Pasta consuming Italy is at... 

All in all, I think that the paleo diet is very healthy and if properly done it's not even supposed to be high in meat. The thing is that EVERY SINGLE DIET THAT DOESN'T INCLUDE PROCESSED FOOD IS HEALTHY, period. You can eat vegetarian or vegan but your diet can still be filled with junk, but not the case with paleo. I think that some cultures have evolved to process grains or dairy better then other. Lol, I found straight up gluten in an Asian supermarket and you know what it's delicious! There's really no one "true" diet except one low on processed food.