Good Day All,

I've been a simple observer on the list for a month or so.  Came to paleo two months ago as a result of giving up wheat a year ago and realizing gluten intolerance was the tip of the iceberg.  I'm one of those overweight women, who was always hungry and truly wheat addicted.  Two months of paleo has been like a vacation I lose a pound a week with out effort, I'm rarely hungry and that only when it's been 5 or 6 hours since my last meal.  

I want to thank Ron for his response to Batsheva, it felt like a great big AH HA!!!   I'm slowly figuring out all of the ins and outs of this way of eating and the seasonality of how we should be eating really strikes a chord with me.  

Thanks everyone for the amazing information being shared.

Sincerely
Kim Winterbottom
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On 2013-03-30, at 1:58 AM, Ron Hoggan wrote:

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> So this is a question I've been harboring for the last year......
> 
> Can the body differentiate between paleo friendly insulin producing foods
> vs. neolithic?  And is the effect of paleo insulin producing foods as
> damaging?
> ____________________________________________________________________________
> ____________
> Hi Batsheva, 
> I would say that the answer is, for the most part, yes. One study has shown
> that gluten-free food reduces the appetite (among overweight women) by about
> 400 calories/day. An opioid blocking drug has been shown to have a similar
> impact on normal subjects. We know that gluten grains contain 5 separate
> opioid sequences, and opioid blocking drugs, or the removal of gluten from
> the diet, seems to stop that appetite enhancing dynamic that arises directly
> from grain cultivation/consumption. 
> 
> Similarly, we know that tryptophan, the precursor of the feel-good
> neurotransmitter, serotonin, is insulin insensitive, so a surge of insulin
> in response to highly glycemic foods (mostly neolithic and/or seasonal
> foods)  will leave more tryptophan in the bloodstream, and thus, more to be
> transported across the blood-brain-barrier. 
> 
> We also know that, while honey and other paleo sweets were available, the
> cost was sufficient, and they were rare enough, to serve as an unusual or
> occasional food that, while enjoyable, would not be a dietary staple. 
> 
> Unseasonable fruits and berries, such as we now see year-round in grocery
> stores, are not congruent with most paleo diet perspectives. It might be
> okay to eat bananas for a few weeks each year, but I don't think it is
> really congruent with paleo eating to consume bananas, berries, or other
> fruits all year long. The tilt of the earth decrees that most of earth's
> inhabitants have had to adapt to seasonal variations in their food supply. 
> 
> I think that there is an amazing convergence of dynamics, including hormone
> secretion, variances in hours of daylight, the changing seasons, and a host
> of other factors that make us produce lots of insulin in the summer and fall
> to store energy as body fat (just like many other mammals on the planet) so
> we are better equipped to survive the lean winter ahead. But we gain weight
> so slowly that, in terms of percentage of body weight, we would be unlikely
> to gain too much weight through summer and fall, so it would inhibit our
> survival through the winter. 
> 
> During winter, a number of hormonal and other factors including all of the
> above, converge to make our stored fats more accessible (dietary ketosis)
> and better equip us to survive the winter, when we will hunt the fats and
> meats of other animals that have also stored fat  for the coming winter.
> This intricate, elegant dance of our hormones, the sunlight, the seasons,
> and available foods is magnificently orchestrated by our genes, which have
> been honed by an equally amazing selection process that now leaves us
> vulnerable to the very appetites and proclivities that we have been
> developing since the first farmer sowed a few kernels of last year's wheat,
> now speeded by the technology and rapid transportation systems that allow us
> to sit under palm trees and nibble an arctic char,  while Inuit shoppers
> pick up a basket of strawberries at their Safeway store in early January. 
> 
> I do go on. :-)
> best wishes, 
> Ron