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].