Comments on: On Food, Diets, Cults and Sudden Paradigm Shifts

By: thediva

thediva — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 02:57:22 +0000

Thanks for your comment Ellie. Before I switched to Paleo a couple of months ago I was eating about 10-15% of my calories from fat. (Not that I’ve actually counted for years, but I was a follower of Dean Ornish’s recommended diet, which is about that ratio.) I was a lot like your mother, and whenever I was served a meal cooked with oil or butter I feared my weight would balloon! I’ve been astonished to find that the opposite has happened — I’ve lost weight. I’ve always been slender, but in the past few years I haven’t been as lean as I would have liked. It seems the culprit was all the grain-based food (and food-like-substances) that I used to consume, not fat.

You’re right though, the jury is still out, and I don’t think there will ever be an answer. It all comes down to what works for each individual, which can take a lot of experimenting to find out!

By: Ellie

Ellie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:24:43 +0000

I recently heard about the Paleo diet and I had the same reaction you did – that CAN’T be healthy. But that is mainly because on first glance, it involved no vegetables. Research showed that it does involve produce, and at it’s most basic, not overprocessed. I think if my FI wanted to try it, I would probably tell him that he can do whatever he wants, but he’s buying his own chest freezer to store the meat in.
As a vegetarian raised by low-fat “healthy” eaters, (which is funny because my dad weighs about 300lbs, but his problem is entirely portion control) I had also been raised to believe that fat = bad. When I started to diet/count calories, I realized that I was only getting about 10-15% of my daily calories from fat, instead of the recommended 30%. I told my mom that 30% was the recommended amount and she told me that I was wrong and that her low fat diet of eating 25 grams of fat a day or less was best. Trying to reform the way that I eat has been very difficult, and it can be very hard to eat meals with my mother where I use olive oil or butter instead of pam and margarine and she worries that whatever I’ve cooked isn’t “low-fat” enough.
I think the jury is still out on the connection between things like cholesterol in food and cholesterol in the blood; between saturated fats and LDL levels; between processed foods and organics. I think there never will be a “best” way to eat, just like we’ll never have an answer on religion.

By: thediva

thediva — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 23:06:19 +0000

I never actually said anything about avoiding all plant foods, and neither do any of the paleo/primal sites that I’m aware of, so I’m not sure where you go that notion. Grains, yes – if you’re eating paleo or primal, these you would avoid. The idea being that we humans are not evolutionarily suited for eating grasses, which have only been used for food for about 10,000 years. Vegetables, however, are to be consumed in great quantities! Many paleo/primal advocates also stay away from tomatoes and other nightshades.

There’s not consensus about fruits: some of the more extreme paleo sites preach that fruit is just “candy from a tree,” and most modern fruits have indeed been bread for high sugar content. On the other hand, the more moderate sites definitely promote fruit as part of a healthy diet. Me, I’m definitely more of a moderate eater! I LOVE fruit! Were I “Pure Paleo” I would avoid all dairy (though this is a contentious issue as well) and definitely avoid sugar, the evil of evils. But I enjoy my cheese, yogurt, butter, ice cream, and dark chocolate, and I don’t plan on giving them up anytime soon. (I also have a killer recipe for grain-free almond cookies that uses a tiny bit of brown sugar. Yummm!) :-)

By: Laurence

Laurence — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:18:20 +0000

Fascinating. However, your initial worry about too much fat should not be dismissed completely. It is not 100% accurate to say that avoiding all plant food is more ‘evolutionarily correct’. While it is true that many nuts and grains are “modern” inventions (i.e. within the last 15,000 years via domestication of wheat, peanuts, etc.), humans did eat their ancestors. Also, ever notice what apes eat? A whole lot of fruits and vegetables in addition to meat. You still need to eat a lot of fruits and veggies for a balanced diet! Part of the cause of your new “leanness” [as if YOU could get ANY leaner] could be that you are losing ‘good’ mass. Just a thought. I am hardly one to preach – while 90% of my diet is a well-sorted balance of lean poultry, fruits, veggies & grains, I eat way too many cookies…