Keith, I think you made great points on your ideology. But for me....
Actually it is entirely more complicated then that. From just a short perusal of your three inferences, I can make arguments that they are not completely wrong per se, but surely they do not define "paleo" nutrition.
1. Clearly humans would have consumed frozen foods on a regular basis. The other packaging is a dismissal of a food that "might" effect its nutritional qualities, but that surely is an open ended issue until someone tracks absorption rates of each individual nutrient. (and whether this increased/decreased absorption is beneficial or not.
2. Available locally/seasonally doesn't follow any true definition of paleolithic nutrition. Just because I might live in the tropics does that mean I should eat tropical fruits year round? Or when I lived in Phoenix, Arizona basically all vegetables and fruits where grown and available locally, almost all year round. Lets also not forget the Luther Burbank factor; the plants that are consumed in the diet today most likely do not represent those of the past.(Grasslands are not famous for their succulents)
3. Well this point makes basically one conclusion in my mind; Fat animals should be the main(and was probably the only food source) in times of plenty, which before the neolithic overpopulation was surely most of the time.
And for the final points
My take on consuming only organics and natural fed animals is that it is an anecdotal no mans land. There is absolutely no proof that consuming organic vegetable or fruits are any more beneficial. And for that matter it probably doesn't matter cause a true paleolith would probably have considered neither a food substance.(Stefansson calls these "monkey" foods)
As for naturally feeding animals, well that is basically a version of the low fat diet. One day someone makes a hypothesis that fat is bad, tells enough people, then without doing any study to disprove this theory(which you never prove a theory, you just can disprove it) it becomes fact. Then one day someone says that grass fed animals are less fat. Okay that goes with the low fat theory lets say that it is healthier. Okay now we have these people who like fat, lets say that is has better fat quality(omega ratios, and monunsaturates). Well could someone please show me a study, that pits grain fed beef verse grass fed beef, that does not involve using the USDA's data for the grain fed animal.
Here is what is so funny; ruminants are not humans; this is what pisses me off most about every low carb book. The supposed irony that they fatten ruminants on grain and then the government(insert your countrys' here) recommends them to humans as being healthy. Then of course there is somewhere else in the book where they discuss the infamous rabbit cholesterol story and make the point that we are humans, not animals so you can't make conclusions on diet between the two.
Well unless your have a built in fermenter like a ruminant then I tell them please don' t make this ridiculous statement. A very basic course on ruminant nutrition. They can eat basically anything; First food goes to the rumen then protists and bacteria actually digest it for them(meanwhile making there own changes; By the way did you know that microorganisms hate unsaturated fatty acids in there membrane? So one of their first changes is to go about saturating these bonds as fast as possible.) Well the ruminant then regurgitates some of the food, and moves it through its three other stomachs, killing and finally absorbing these protists and bacteria. So almost all of their nutrition is these bugs; not plants, not fruits, not grains; not meat. Feed the bugs more calories; you get more calories down the line; but the macronutrient ratio remains relatively stable. You can spin the system a little by adding fish meal, oils etc. But while the argument that grains are high in
w6 to w3 and grass is w3 to w6 heavy seems to go undisputed.(never seen that study either) it doesn't matter to the bugs because they saturate them as fast as possible. So you might wonder what CLA is then, and how come grass fed is higher. This undisputed fact makes no logical sense. CLAs are trans fat that are formed by microbes saturating bonds, but not having time to finish. So if grains have more polyunsaturates then grain fed beef should be higher in CLA(which it probably is, but not percentage of fat wise.)
Ruminants are mainly saturated fat, because there diet is high in saturated fat; those fats that are not saturated are desaturated by their own enzymes and less so by their diet. While it seems reasonable to say grass fed have a better omega profile they contain such a small amount of these fats that a few walnuts would skew it the entire other direction. Whereas you can take grain fed and skew it the other direction by a sardine.
So a paleoman would choose grainfed; for the simple fact they are fatter.
As for other animals; pigs, horses, poultry et cetera I have yet to answer their nutritional questions to my satisafaction. I think except for pigs and some poultry the others would lack the fat paleoman would want.(Sorry for discounting fatty grubs, locusts, reptiles and the rest as I'm sure they were consumed, but I know I won't)
And as for milk well that is a concession that you take. My concessions are vegetables and fruits(and obviously the teas I drink). As for physiology there is no reason not to eat any food including twinkies and hohos and cokes and anything else that lives in the middle of the supermarket. That is one of the reasons why Voegtlin's digestive diet C includes rice, potatoes and toast(he found no problems including them in patients who remained on his diet A for three months).
Wow, that was more than I planned to write; i guess I let my whole ideology out of the bag. Also you can see why I have a little more work to do in figuring out what "my paleo" diet entails.
Vale,
Eric
Keith Thomas <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
On Fri, 20 May 2005 15:05, Eric LoVullo wrote:
>Greetings everyone,
>Basically the reason I'm back is to further flesh out, in my own mind,
>what this diet actually should entail
>
>val
>Eric
That's easy, Eric, it's about confining your food intake to the foods that would have been available
to Homo sapiens before the descent into agriculture which began about 10,000 years ago in some
parts of the world and is almost completed today. We refer to these foods as Palaeo (or Paleo).
Numerous corollaries spring from this, most prominent among them being (1) that the foods
should be consumed in their Palaeo state (not frozen, packaged, bottled or tinned), (2) seasonally
available locally (not imported or trucked in from another climatic zone), (3) generally require
fewer energy units to gather than the energy units provided by their consumption. Where such
foods cannot be had for the gathering, we make a 21st century compromise by eating foods that
are grown using agricultural methods, but we try to ensure that these foods are organic and
grown as naturally as possible (for example, no grain-fed beef or poultry). We also avoid recipes -
which obviously didn't exist 10,000 years ago.
Because human evolution is an on-going thing, different people with different ancestries, have
different evolutionary adaptations to different foods. Some people have a Palaeo intolerance to
grains and dairy products while others can eat them without any ill-effects. For those who
tolerate milk and cheese, there is no physiological reason for them not to eat these products, but
some people prefer to avoid them for ideological reasons - that is, to reamain a Palaeo purist.
We look forward to hearing from you in the future!
Keith
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