3 Perspectives on the Paleo Diet
Different ways to understand why it's good
Paleo diet is:
vegetables (tomato, cucumber, pepper, mushrooms, cabbage…)
meat + eggs (chicken, pork, beef, eggs…)
fruit (apples, bananas, grapes, berries …)
nuts (almonds, pecans, walnuts … )
When someone asks me why I do the paleo diet, there 3 different reasons for it or principles that underline it, each with a new perspective. These principles are both used for understanding why the paleo diet is good and as a guide for navigating differing options of what exact version of “paleo” to get for oneself. It’s frequent that people who try paleo and stick to it end up understanding and going through these roughly in order.
Perspective 1: Evolutionary Perspective
The very name Paleo is taken from “Paleolithic era”. We eat like cavemen because that’s what we are adapted to it evolutionarily. It’s simple. If a caveman lived till 5 years old and also managed to avoid getting killed in war, they could live a very long life.
Wikipedia has a horribly written article on Paleo Diet, which I will not link due to disrespect. There is an unfortunately common near non-sensical “claim” that humans could have evolved better digestion since 10000 years ago to match their diets, therefore they must have evolved better digestion.
It’s pretty sad sight to see stuff like this on wikipedia, not just because it’s a bad argument, but partly because it perpetuates misunderstandings of what “evolution” actually is.
Let’s talk evolution 101. Evolution is change of genes frequencies in a population over time. Evolution is *not* humans collectively deciding to learn some new skill, nor should it be modelled as a “progress” or “regress” towards a point. Evolution works by some people dying more or less than others and having kids more or less than others. Inequality in outcomes is what drives change. Change has a directionality of “being more adapted” to the environment, however it does not have to have other directionalities, such as more “moral” or “happy” people.
It could, but doesn’t have to. Evolution isn’t a nice process, nor is it a mean one, it merely is.
if we suppose that a particular genetic dietary ability is in the process of “evolving” in humans, that means this ability is going from “rare” to “less rare” through conferring some sort of advantage to people who have it. Or, by conferring some sort of disadvantage to people who don’t have it, such as being poisoned by the food in question. So, if an ability to digest a particular food is in “evolving” in humans, that means either
1. the food is so incredibly valuable and able to give nutrients you can’t get elsewhere to people who can digest it
2. The food is actually poison to people who can’t digest it, but they are eating it for some reason anyways.
Now, explanation 1: food good is plausible really only for a strange situation when the food that not everyone can digest is capable of providing something that humans simply can’t get through foods they *can* digest. This can happen during famines or serious changes in food availability.
"Explanation 2: food bad" is a plausible explanation in times of higher food availability, but stronger cultural pressures to eat things that are bad for you.
However, "Explanation 2: food bad" is just the argument FOR the paleo diet, not against IT. Since “we are evolving towards being able to digest some food” is actually *evidence* FOR this food being poison for a large portion of the population, not *against* it. However, it’s easy to get strangely caught up in the “positive” affect of the word “evolution” without realizing this “evolution” might mean you dying from eating shitty food.
There is actually an interesting example of a food that is in the Explanation-1. It’s milk. Ability to digest milk has actually become far more common in Europeans in the last 10000 years. It’s not as common in other peoples. This actually presents a little bit of an evolutionary puzzle as to why milk is so valuable, especially since cheese and other milk by-products have less lactose and are thus easier to digest even without this ability. Also, if it is so valuable, why is it more valuable for Europeans? One guess is that likely Vitamin D is harder to acquire in Europe than other parts of the world. Another guess is that milk was cleaner from bacteria compared to water.
Still the ability to consume milk, or lactose tolerance is still not genetically 100% despite the surprisingly massive, but not yet understood advantage. Lactose intolerance still exists and likely is less hurtful if one can get both clean water and vitamin D from sunlight or supplements.
The important thing to understand here is that milk is an exception not the rule. There are well understood genes affecting it. The protein for digesting milk has always been present in people, it’s just that its production has been turned *off* in adulthood. One can imagine that evolutionary changes that merely turn a feature *back on* are simpler to acquire than ones responsible for a brand new protein. Lactose tolerance conferred a significant advantage in one part of the world, but not others and it still remains a mystery of why it evolved so quickly.
Other non-paleo foods do not share the same path. If we take celiac disease, for example, which might seem like clear potential negative, we find a hugely surprising “The genetic variants behind celiac disease seem to be just as common now as they've been since humans began eating wheat.”
This may be surprising to you because effectively a large portion of the population is *not* adapting to eating wheat and doing perfectly ok despite it. In reality, “Celiac disease” is likely called a disease by mistake. A more precise name is an auto-immune disorder, but I suspect it’s merely an immune system with a more aggressive Self-Other distinction. This likely confers massive advantages when not eating wheat to compensate for the dis-advantages. Ability to digest foods doesn’t come for free, it may require down-tuning one’s immune system to not recognize certain things as enemies. I wouldn’t actually be surprised if the genes coding for this actually became more prevalent in today’s world which has a large variety of both foods and hostile parasites.
If we take a lot of other foods that Paleo prohibits, we find that they are actually quite recent and certainly did not have the 10000 years that milk had. Not that there is a guarantee they would become more digestible if they did.
Sugar Cane arrived in Europe in the 13th century. Potatoes and sunflower didn’t arrive in Europe until 16th century. Soy in Europe was even later, however it has been cultivated in China for thousands of years. Gluten content of wheat has also risen in the last century, making it quite different from what it used to be.
It worth noting that different groups of people have had different foods for the last 10 000 years and likely in the years prior as well. You might be more adapted to eating the foods your particular ancestors ate, but this isn’t a guarantee.
The big picture here is that we didn’t adapt to eat many of the foods outside of the Paleo List. Milk is the exception, which some Paleo people approve and others don’t. Some foods are too new and some, like wheat contain gluten which is too similar to in profile to hostile chemicals.
However, this version of justification for the Paleo diet is too strict for some people. Europeans are more adapted to eat tomatoes than potatoes even though they were introduced to Europe at the same time. Some foods are natural and are able to be digested due to being similar enough to other foods, despite being new to a particular group.
Perspective 2: Nutrients and Anti-Nutrients
Paleo avoids a number of micro-toxins and allergens.
Another reason for certain specific Paleo guidelines is summarized in a simple fact: seeds are bad. The guideline also follows an evolutionary argument, though not for people, but for plants. Plants don’t want to have their seeds be digested. Plants create fruit with a number of nutritional qualities that are appetizing to eat. However, inside the fruit they hide the seeds. The plantd doesn’t want the seeds to be fully digested, but rather discarded in some way. The plants can accomplish this by adding anti-nutrients to hurt digestion.
Apple seeds have cyanide, wheat has gluten, peanuts, beans and other legumes have a few toxins. Soy is, of course, horrifically disruptive to hormones especially male ones. Much noise has been made about the toxicity of seed oils and I agree. However, it’s worth noting that the seeds *are bad to start with* in addition to the processing making the situation worse. This perspective is important for people who might think oh, well, beans existed for a while, how bad can they be? The answer is that beans are probably slightly toxic and are not approved on paleo.
nother important and somewhat contentious point is that roots are also bad. Unlike fruits, where the plant stores nutrients for the animal, roots store nutrients for the plant. Potatoes are somewhat contentious, but I agree with thepaloediet.com on this.
Personally, I actually take an even more hardline stance on this and I avoid potatoes, onions, garlic. I am not against carrots, but I don’t eat them often either. Onions and garlic are strictly forbidden under Buddhism anyways.
This perspective is harsher in some ways because it, for example, disallows a Chinese person to eat soy or New World native to eat potatoes. This also gives a good guideline for eating other vegetables. Peppers are great, but avoid the seeds.
This perspective is actually two separate reasons:
a) eating the part of the plant that doesn’t contain seeds or roots due to evolutionary reasons
b) not eating parts of plants known to have anti-nutrients.
Both are valid perspectives, just keep in mind that certain roots or seeds’s anti-nutrients are not actually well understood, so it’s safer to avoid them.
Perspective 3: Paleo Feels Good
In the above image, I am pretty sure they are not thinking “oh I sure wish I had some plastic bottles of liquid food.”
The last perspective is less of a Paleo specific idea, but rather the final arbiter of what foods I eat and don’t eat. Generally speaking, it means “follow your gut,” but intelligently so.
It’s worth looking at other people and how often they go on and off diets. I have been doing paleo for 11 years and while I don’t consider my diet necessarily perfect, I tend to look for health improvements in other areas. Many people try “vegan diets” and go out of it. Many people try keto, which usually ends up being a stricter version of paleo and go out of it. Sometimes people do stick to pure keto or pure carnivore. Epilepsy sufferers in particular seem to benefit from keto. Somebody sticking to diet for a long time is a good sign it feels good to them. Every diet has some die-hard supporters, but be wary of something that has a low retention rate.
While others can provide somewhat of a guide, what about something feeling good to you? What foods look good to you? Do you ever look at a colorful salad and get “food envy”?
Once you understand the blue-print of paleo – such as eating what your ancestors ate, avoiding seeds and roots, you might have some questions about whether specific foods are good or bad for you and what combinations are best. This will be determined by a mix of your genetics, gut floura, food you are used to, what is available in your area, what your lifestyle is.
Once you have the above blue print, what is the method to modify it to suit you more specifically? And how do you know it’s working?
The first step is to try to be pretty strict for 3 months or so, eliminating all known allergens, including alcohol. In my experience after 3 months, I was no longer having cravings for a lot of non-paleo food.
The second step is slowly relax your constraints, watch carefully what you eat and note how it makes you feel. Food frequently has a particular feel to it in the first hour after eating, a few hours later and the next day. You can try to do a food diary recording everything, or you can try to note whenever you feel “bad”, such as “low-energy” or “food coma” or general sadness and note which foods you have eaten in the last day or so. More often than not you will find a “culprit” such as either a break from the diet or a food you determined is ok to eat occasionally, such as rice or chocolate that you had a bit too much of. Occasionally you might note that you could be lacking a food you normally eat. Maybe you are lacking a certain food as well. Perhaps you needed a small amount of fresh veggies or a magnesium supplement. Maybe it has not been very sunny, so you actually need some milk or a vitamin d supplement.
This method is similar to the “Elimination Diet”. I generally like their method, however the prior knowledge of elimination diet is not as strict as I would like. One should assume that non-paleo foods are likely bad for you and paleo foods are good as long as you have the proper variety.
You might say that this suddenly seems a lot like a diet which says “eat what you like.” Well, not exactly the main difference that “eat what you like” has from my method is the understanding that food may take up to a day or more to have a noticeable impact on one’s mood. Also, the expectation of what food might be good is not as reliable as what food has had a good impact in the past. Expectations of what might be good are usually related more to the macros rather than specific foods. If you want ice cream you might be lacking fat and can use some eggs and bacon instead.
The general argument here is that after using the prior information of paleo, you can understand your specific use case by getting in touch with your body’s reactions to food. Generally speaking, my guess is that if you are careful enough you will not deviate from the priors that much. However individual experience is an important way to navigate food.
One of my favorite arguments for the paleo diet is less of an argument and more of a guideline of how to try it and see / feel it for yourself.
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