Walter Pittman Says:
February 6th, 2008 at 12:16 am
Lucky Charms and Happy Meals are not the rational alternative to a Paleo style diet. Of course the typical American diet ravages the body; a more interesting issue is how well we are adapted to the high-carb, lower fat diet that many of our ancestors ate for the last several thousand years of agriculture, inbetween our modern refined junk diet and the millenia-old Paleo days. I suspect many of us ARE well adapted to unrefined grains and milk–how could it be otherwise, when that’s what our ancestors ate for thousands of years? Those who didn’t adapt fell by the wayside. Some cultures never went through this weeding-out agricultural phase (Australian aboriginies, Pacific Islanders, Many American Indians) and they suffer for it today with astronomical rates of diabetes and heart disease. Others are more resistant to metabolic disease because their ancestors were forced to adapt (to some degree) to high-carb, grain and milk diets. I think it is entirely reasonable to believe that some people (such as myself) do quite well on high carb, lower fat diets for just this reason. Evolution didn’t end with the advent of agriculture, and such a catalyst as radical dietary change must have induced a very rapid evolutionary adaptation to that new condition. A paleo diet may or may not be superior, for various reasons, but one problem with animal products today is that they are very likely to contain high amounts of PCB-like chemicals within their fats. Until we know more about just how harmful (or not) these chemicals are, it might be wise to limit animal fats (including dairy fats). On the other hand, if you feel your best on a low-carb (and therefore necessarily high-fat) diet, then perhaps it’s worth taking the risk.
Source: Cordain on the Evolution of the Human Diet
I think this is an extremely good point to make. There are some people that do very well on higher carb diets, even ones with a decent amount of grains.
0 comments ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment