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I wrote what follows as a brain dump in preparation for a piece on
paleo diet and exercise. It's rough, but I'd really appreciate your
thoughts.
Thanks.
Jim Swayze
www.fireholecanyon.com
Taubes is halfway right in his tour de force critique of modern diet
and health assumptions. Carbohydrate consumption of the sort
recommended by nutritional “scientists” of the last fifty years,
recommendations almost universally reflected in well-meaning public
policy, clearly cause obesity and its associated host of human
disease. And Taubes also rightly calls out recently invented manmade
fats as unnatural and unhealthy.
But of equal importance to human well being is a problem of much
older origin: the post-Neolithic adoption of grass seeds as food.
The archeological record is clear that before the “Agricultural
Revolution” cereal grains almost never were a human food source – and
at best would have been considered as such only in times of rampant
starvation if they were considered at all. The evidence shows that
humans evolved for millions of years on diets composed almost solely
of fresh water, wild game, fish, insects, and low glycemic fruits and
vegetables in season.
So while excess carbohydrate consumption of the kind derided by Gary
Taubes is clearly unnatural and therefore unhealthy, it’s also clear
that that much if not most disease develops as a direct result of the
novel adoption of cereal grains as food, their high carbohydrate
content notwithstanding.
Let’s talk for a minute about human caloric needs. Even though we
may have come across the odd early summer honey cache or binged on
seasonal blackberries, for most of the year carbohydrates as a
primary source of energy would have been nonexistent. So where were
we getting most of our energy from? Many paleolithic nutrition
experts, including paleo nutrition pioneer Dr. Loren Cordain, have
wrongly suggested the second of the three macronutrients: protein.
The problem with this is reflected in the phenomenon of “rabbit
starvation,” a malady very well known by our ancestors. Humans
simply cannot obtain sufficient calories from protein as a primary
caloric source. [See side effects of too much protein; and
gluconeogenesis.]
No carbs, moderate protein. What does that leave us with? Fat.
Healthy, natural fats comprised from 70-80% of daily calories.
[Explain here how that diet might work on a practical, day-to-day
basis].
Ok, so what about exercise? Surely we’ve got it right that one needs
at least twenty minutes a day of aerobic exercise several times a
week? Wrong. Ancient man exercised briefly and intensely one to
three times a week. [Develop].
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