"[log in to unmask]" wrote:
>
> so wait wait wait...
> aside from whatever this little online spat is about Ken and Canola oil... it sounds like sugars are paleo but to be avoided...? that seems contrary to everything else I've read here... but maybe I'm missing something.



Sugar is fine in limited quantity. The problem we have is
the near endless availability of sugar in the modern diet. I
read somewhere recently the people today eat over a hundred
pounds a year of pure sugar. Try eating that much contained
in fruit! Even fruit can be overconsumed. Paleo people may
have eaten huge amounts of fruit, but only in season. The
rest of the year they had to eat low carb, out of neccesity,
not choice. A few weeks of high sugar consumption, in wild
fruit or roots, and the rest of the year low carb, would
have little ill effect on your body.
Especially since exercise was probably high for most people.

> So, are sugars less harmful that white/whole wheat flour?  less harmful than corn?  I wish I could place foods on a continuum from best to worst.

For me, wheat is the absolute worst. It gives me every bad
symptom from migraine headaches to nasty gas. Other grains
are somewhat less troubling, and rice doesn't seem to bother
in small amounts.

Sugar is OK for me in small amounts, but I easily go over
that, even with fruit, and start to get digestive
disturbances of various sorts. Nothing life threatening, but
annoying, like gas and bloating. So I tend to keep low carb.
Besides, when I run after eating lots of carbs I feel
exhausted and thirsty very quickly, but the lower carb I go,
the better I feel training and racing.

I do eat a lot of non paleo foods, potatoes, milk products,
peanuts, rice etc. Something or other every day. But the
main thrust of my diet is low carb paleo. If I get too far
from either, I know it quickly.


> starting to think I don't understand paleo at all.


Unfortunately, neither does anyone else. Most of the animals
our ancestors hunted are extinct. All the blather about fat
profiles of this or that meat is moot. No body knows the fat
profile of the wild animals of the paleolithic, except those
puny remainders of today. The best we can do is cut with
Occam's razor and use common sense.