I received the following question in the comments section:
Hey Robb, Have you ever looked at the work of T Colin Campbell at Cornell? He wrote a book called the China Study about how eating meat is bad for you. I don’t want to ask you to do extra work, just wondering if you had already looked at his research. Sabin Sabin-
Yes, I’m familiar with Campbells work. We sponsored a debate between Campbell and Loren Cordain a few years ago. I have much respect for the body of work Campbell has generated, but he put minimal effort into the project…I think it simply reflected a pay-day for him. His arguements were weak, he was totally outclassed and thus resorted to what many debators do when faced with immenent defeat: He went for personal attacks on Cordain, addressed none of the core issues and relegated the debate to the realm of metaphysics.
I tackled this in a post at the NorCal site. NorCal Nutrition: Are We Crazy?
If someone wants to deconstruct the paleo concept, there are ample opportuniteis to do so from the material in that post…but when we start talking facts, predictive value of theories etc. the nay-sayers can only find company with the likes of FlatEarthers and New-Earth proponents.
The notions that:
1-Vegetarianism is the best way for humans to eat.
2-the earth is flat.
3-the earth is 6,000years old
Share some interesting characteristics:
They do not reflect, research data, empirical findings, or offer any predictive value. Why? They are fantasies.
In the case of vegetarianism from the China Study perspective, we should see a simple dose response curve with meat intake and cancer. We do not. In fact, we only need ONE (1) example of a conflicting finding to completely discredit the hypothesis. The Inuit Paradox is just such an example. Now the vegetarians will start back-pedaling and yamering a bunch of bull-shit, but the fact is we have a well documented example of a society that consumes greater than 90% of it’s calories from MEAT yet suffers NO:cancer, diabetes, or heart disease until the introduction of neolithic foods. This fact is forgotten, ignored, dismissed…but it’s still a fact. The inuit, are BTW but one of hundreds of hunter gatherer cultures who represent this interesting “Paradox”.
I wrapped up the NorCal Nutrition post with Prof. Cordain’s opening piece from the Protein Debate. I’m going to re-post that here becasue it needs to be read, discussed and debated. If you are going to attack the merrits of a paleo nutritional approach then you need to attack the underpinnings of modern biology, genetics, and biochemistry. Good luck with that.
Introduction
Although humanity has been interested in diet and health for thousands of years, the organized, scientific study of nutrition has a relatively recent past. For instance, the world’s first scientific journal devoted entirely to diet and nutrition, The Journal of Nutrition only began publication in 1928. Other well known nutrition journals have a more recent history still: The British Journal of Nutrition (1947), The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1954), and The European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (1988). The first vitamin was “discovered” in 1912 and the last vitamin (B12) was identified in 1948 (1). The scientific notion that omega 3 fatty acids have beneficial health effects dates back only to the late 1970’s (2), and the characterization of the glycemic index of foods only began in 1981 (3).
Nutritional science is not only a newly established discipline, but it is also a highly fractionated, contentious field with constantly changing viewpoints on both major and minor issues that impact public health. For example, in 1996 a task force of experts from the American Society for Clinical Nutrition (ASCN) and the American Institute of Nutrition (AIN) came out with an official position paper on trans fatty acids stating,
“We cannot conclude that the intake of trans fatty acids is a risk factor for coronary heart disease” (4).
Fast forward 6 short years to 2002 and the National Academy of Sciences, Institute of Medicine’s report on trans fatty acids (5) stating,
“Because there is a positive linear trend between trans fatty acid intake and total and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol concentration, and therefore increased risk of cardiovascular heart disease, the Food and Nutrition Board recommends that trans fatty acid consumption be as low as possible while consuming a nutritionally adequate diet”.
These kinds of complete turnabouts and divergence of opinion regarding diet and health are commonplace in the scientific, governmental and medical communities. The official U.S. governmental recommendations for healthy eating are outlined in the “My Pyramid” program (6) which recently replaced the “Food Pyramid”, both of which have been loudly condemned for nutritional shortcomings by scientists from the Harvard School of Public Health (7). Dietary advice by the American Heart Association (AHA) to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease (CHD) is to limit total fat intake to 30% of total energy, to limit saturated fat to <10% of energy and cholesterol to <300 mg/day while eating at least 2 servings of fish per week (8). Although similar recommendations are proffered in the USDA “My Pyramid”, weekly fish consumption is not recommended because the authors of these guidelines feel there is only “limited” information regarding the role of omega 3 fatty acids in preventing cardiovascular disease (6). Surprisingly, the personnel makeup of both scientific advisory boards is almost identical. At least 30 million Americans have followed Dr. Atkins advice to eat more fat and meat to lose weight (9). In utter contrast, Dean Ornish tells us fat and meat cause cancer, heart disease and obesity, and that we would all would be a lot healthier if we were strict vegetarians (10). Who’s right and who’s wrong? How in the world can anyone make any sense out of this apparent disarray of conflicting facts, opinions and ideas?
In mature and well-developed scientific disciplines there are universal paradigms that guide scientists to fruitful end points as they design their experiments and hypotheses. For instance, in cosmology (the study of the universe) the guiding paradigm is the “Big Bang” concept showing that the universe began with an enormous explosion and has been expanding ever since. In geology, the “Continental Drift” model established that all of the current continents at one time formed a continuous landmass that eventually drifted apart to form the present-day continents. These central concepts are not theories for each discipline, but rather are indisputable facts that serve as orientation points for all other inquiry within each discipline. Scientists do not know everything about the nature of the universe, but it is absolutely unquestionable that it has been and is expanding. This central knowledge then serves as a guiding template that allows scientists to make much more accurate and informed hypotheses about factors yet to be discovered.
The study of human nutrition remains an immature science because it lacks a universally acknowledged unifying paradigm (11). Without an overarching and guiding template, it is not surprising that there is such seeming chaos, disagreement and confusion in the discipline. The renowned Russian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) said, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (12). Indeed, nothing in nutrition seems to make sense because most nutritionists have little or no formal training in evolutionary theory, much less human evolution. Nutritionists face the same problem as anyone who is not using an evolutionary model to evaluate biology: fragmented information and no coherent way to interpret the data.
All human nutritional requirements like those of all living organisms are ultimately genetically determined. Most nutritionists are aware of this basic concept; what they have little appreciation for is the process (natural selection) which uniquely shaped our species’ nutritional requirements. By carefully examining the ancient environment under which our genome arose, it is possible to gain insight into our present day nutritional requirements and the range of foods and diets to which we are genetically adapted via natural selection (13-16). This insight can then be employed as a template to organize and make sense out of experimental and epidemiological studies of human biology and nutrition (11).
Robb,
I don’t know if you’ve addressed this before – Dr. Ajit Varki postulates that meat from mammals causes inflammation in humans due to the molecule neu5gc, a molecule found in all mammals with the exception of humans. Therefore when we eat red meat, this molecule triggers an auto-immune response. Here is the article I cite- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3346666/Mystery-of-the-meat-eaters%27-molecule.html.
Varki admits further studies are required, do you think there is any substance to his theory, especially in light of the Paleo diet?
Thanks
It looks interesting…but nearly anything can cause autoimmunity if the gut is not healthy. Primary cause of leaky gut? Grains. There could be something to this, but again, we see none of this potential deleterious effect in hunter gatherer populations. This was an interesting part of the article:
Chimpanzees do not seem to suffer from heart disease, cancers, rheumatoid arthritis or bronchial asthma – common conditions in humans. Nor do they get sick from the human malaria parasite, which uses sialic acid to latch on to our blood cells.
Well…chimps don’t get these things till they start eating NIHOO7 lab chow…which is made of grain. Interesting stuff however, will look into this. I still think if one’s gut is healthy this is not going to be an issue.
Robb – I first encounter the China Study a few years ago when my teammate Tony Gonzalez was given the book. He read the book and renounced meat and dairy and decided the China Study was the best way for him to become a better athlete and a healthy individual. He gave me the book, which read and promptly dismissed. The book was filled with a lot of studies and was repetitive. I had not heard of the Paleo Diet at the time but was pretty close just through my own trial and error. I knew grains made me feel bloated and tired and I did my best to avoid them. I found myself drinking a lot of fruit juice and Gator-aid. Not knowing the dangers of HFCS. i knew about diabetes but didnt understand the role of fats and Omega 3’s in the diet. However, I have knew the more animal based protein I consumed the stronger I felt. I never did buy into the China Study and was against Campbell’s work after I found research he had done on health and benefits of animal based proteins. I think Tony has seen the error of his ways and is eating meat once again. He was very emotional about it but i think it had to with the large amount of Soy he was consuming.
John-
Soy makes me want to cry to. Your site kicks ass BTW! I feel like shutting this thing down and just guest posting on your site…
hey robb,
thanks for the article – my dad is really into vegetarian stuff and he often shoves the colin campbell book in my face. And as parents get older its really hard to convince them of anything.
I noticed a disagreement/typo? between your post and the “Inuit Paradox” article, regarding to percentage of calories allocated to protein
in the article –
“Protein accounts for no more than 35 to 40 percent of their total calories, which suggests to him that’s all the protein humans can comfortably handle” referring to Dr. Cordain
in your post-
“we have a well documented example of a society that consumes greater than 90% of it’s calories from MEAT yet suffers NO:cancer, diabetes, or heart disease until the introduction of neolithic foods.”
Dan-
Neither typo nor disagreement. 35-40% is the highest amount of PROTEIN we can process. The Inuit ate a 60-70% FAT diet and a 30-40% PROTEIN diet. Add those percentages together to get 100%.
I read the debate. While I agree with some of your points about Dr. Campbell, it seemed to me that he completely undermined Prof. Cordain’s entire basis for the Paleo diet. Basically, what our ancestors ate in the past does not mean it was optimal for their health or for our health. Evolution favors successful procreation, not long and healthy life. Thus, when our ancestors were struggling to get enough food to survive, consuming animal flesh gave them a temporary survival advantage (versus eating little or nothing, and starving to death). Though we now know that continuing on this diet for a lifetime would ultimately kill them, it would not likely do so before they successfully procreated.
The Inuit and Masai, among others, would seem to suggest there is a different cause, until you realize that these groups don’t live long enough for their chronic diseases to express themselves (it is easy to look up – as I recall, the Inuit were living to around 60 years of age, and the Masai averaged 45-55). Because so many die before all of the symptoms of their disease show up, we cannot draw any conclusions as to their susceptibility to the disease; in other words, we cannot say that they are immune to the disease, and we cannot say that they are vulnerable to the disease, based on their death statistics. Rationally, they are human beings, so we should be able to surmise that if they had significantly reduced their other causes of death (infection, attack, accident, etc), and started living longer, they would show higher rates of death due to the common chronic diseases.
John-
I have to say a big “thank you” for launching in with some of the most entrenched mis-information surrounding all of nutrition.
First piece-
That our survival was, in the short run enhanced by meat consumption, yet it ultimately undermines long term health (or longevity) is completely false. If an individual lived through his/her 30’s (many did not) they had about as good a chance of living to their 60’s as most westerners. Campbell simply side steps the whole concept of evolutionary biology and launches off into whimsical alternative realities. This is why I call it metaphysics and equate it with the FlatEarthers.
Second piece-
You guys always cite the “short brutal” lives as a lack of time to develop degenerative disease, but you keep missing the fact that NO CANCER, DIABETES, OR HEART DISEASE existed. No breast cancer in 30 year old women, no childhood leukemia…do you GET that? Explorers and researchers like Vilhjalmer Stefansson, Robert Lee and many others lived among these people for decades, so please do not pull the “we just don’t know that much about the lives of these people” card. We know plenty, some choose to ignore it, others get it, even if by trial and error.
You can read an excellent treatment of the common counter arguments here.
In response to John, another problem is that it is not that easy to determine the age of the indiviudal from ancient bones once they were adult. It is by no means so clear cut as people think – see for example:
http://en.allexperts.com/q/Archaeology-654/Ancient-bones-testing-age.htm
and the discussion at:
http://www.beyondveg.com/nicholson-w/angel-1984/angel-1984-1a.shtml
I would also note that many of the supposed indicators of age that are used e.g. loss of teeth, thinning of bone due to osteoporosis MIGHT NOT BE PRESENT in hunter/gatherer remains because these conditions are caused by grains in the first place! Hence skeletons may be taken to be younger than they really are – we have no way of telling.
Hi Robb,
Great Post, as usual.
Although I’m sympathetic with vegetarians, because of animal rights, as a future scientist (at least hope so), I go by the evidence and several lines of evidence support the Evolutionary Theory that Drs. Boyd Eaton, Loren Cordain, Staffan Lindeberg and others propose.
I think it is safe to say (and many respected evolutionary biologists, such as Dawkins, believe this is true) that a living organism best fits the environment to which its ancestors adapted over millennia (just see what happens to a chimp or a lion when zoo keepers don’t recreate the natural environment in which this animals lived), and we now have very good evidence (at the genetic level) that all living Homo Sapiens have an African origin (~200,000 years) and that Neanderthals aren’t ancestors of European homo sapiens (as it was believed in the past), but are distant cousins and as Boyd Eaton points out in a 2006 paper, there is more genetic variability amongst gorillas in Africa living 500 km apart that between a Chinese and a Finn. And there is much more genetic variability between African people than among people from other continents.
This tell us that our genome best fits an African Environment, which could be summarized as follows:
• High UV radiation year long, which would lead to high 25OHD3 levels and now we have multiple studies showing that this is maybe the most important thing you could do for your health and makes us ask: why do we need UV radiation? Why do we need to achieve levels of Vitamin D > 32 ng/ml? Because we evolved in an environment that provided such plasma levels of D and our genes adapted to such an environment and remember that dermal depigmentation (which makes us need less UV radiation to synthesise Vitamin D) in extreme latitudes like Sweden and Norway can only avoid rickets (and presumably this why these people have fare skin and blue eyes), but doesn’t do much to avoid fractures in our 70s or Cancer in our 50s (oslo, in Norway has the highest hip fractures statistics in the world and in Sweden, the prevalence of prostate cancer is high)
• Regular Physical Activity – as Frank Booth beautifully states: Sedentarism is a disease, since humans are meant to be active and not sedentary, so whenever an experiment is conducted to evaluate the benefits of Exercise, the correct way would be to pick up two groups of Physical active individuals and have one group become physically inactive and have as control the one that remains active. So whenever someone states: “Exercise is good for your blood pressure and your insulin resistance problem”, maybe we should ask if the correct answer would be: If you don’t exercise, your blood pressure will rise and you will become insulin resistant, since your genome best thrives in an environment where exercise exists, as opposed to inactivity.
• A diet composed of wild vegetation and wild animals. Now here are some big questions for those who don’t buy into the evolutionary theory:
o Why do we need Vitamin C? Because we adapted to a diet that provided Vitamin C – a high fruit and vegetable diet may provide more than 500 mg of Vitamin C and, although controversial, there are studies showing that the pale RDA of 60 mg (which appear to have no precedent in our African origin), although it avoids scurvy, it is insufficient to act as an antioxidant
o Why do we need DHA and EPA and why the conversion from its precursor ALA (found in flax seed oil) is very inefficient? Maybe because we ingested preformed EPA and DHA either from Ruminant Brain (if you believe in the Savana Hypothesis) or from fish (if you believe in the Costal hypothesis, which was given more strength, after an advanced population of humans was found to explore marine resources in South Africa – this was published in Nature recently). So the question shouldn’t be: Does DHA do any good for our brain, as much stuydies have been conducted, but what happens to our brain when we don’t give it enough DHA? (since it appears that our brain evolved in part thanks to DHA).
o Why there are studies showing that Vitamin K2 has a number of health benefits? Maybe because our ancestors ate food sources of this vitamin and their genome adapted to it (btw, in a primitive environment, Vitamin K2 is best found in liver), so a diet devoided of K2 will lead to a number of disorders and when we add back this nutrient to these deficient people, their condition improves, or, as I normally say, they become physiologically normal
o Etc, etc.
And regarding average life expectancy, it is true that it has doubled in the last 200 years, but there are two issues with this:
1) The main reason wasn’t a better diet, but improvements in medical care, public health measures and general economic prosperity.
2) The problem with statistics is that when you have a family of 4 and one dies at birth (because of an infection), the other at 30 (because he falls out of a tree while picking up coconuts), another at 60 (because he is killed by enemies) and another at 80 (because of old age), the average life expectancy will be 42,5 years, so we shouldn’t rely on these average numbers. As Dr. Staffan Lindeberg, from Sweden says: “Average life expectancy at birth was rather low, but once they reached 50 they may have had a similar chance of living until old age as in modern societies.”
As for health in H/G, Robb has already touched upon this, but I would add another example: The Kitava people of The Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea, who have been extensively studied by Dr. Staffan Lindeberg are generally free of the diseases of civilization and many of them live until old age.
Again quoting Dr. Staffan Lindeberg:
“Nutritional recommendations for public health are resting on such unstable ground that evolutionary medicine may provide an important complement to traditional scientific methods [79, 80]. Reading the scientific literature through the lens of evolutionary biology can make it easier to understand the extremely complex relationships between diet and health.
Dietary advice to prevent and treat common western diseases should be designed in accordance with human’s biological heritage as much as possible. Foods that have been part of the human staple diet for less than 10,000 years should be critically examined before they are recommended as staple food.”
And I would finish with an answer (again by Dr. Staffan Lindeberg) to the following question:
Aren’t we adapted to grains and milk?
“Not if they cause disease at old age. The time since agriculture emerged is far too short for natural selection to eliminate those who cannot fully handle such food. If you die from atherosclerosis at age 55 or live until 90 does not affect the fitness of your children very much, unfortunately. “
Outstanding comment!! The only thing I’d add is Vit-c requirements, similar to many b vits, may be highly dependent upon amount of carbohydrate intake. Garry Taubes talks about this at length in Good Calories, Bad Calories.
Yes, I saw that. Very intriguing. So, 40,000 years ago in Africa, if most of our carbs came from fruit & veggies, which contain vit C, as oposed to grains, which are devoided of Vit C, it appears that nature had solved that problem for homo sapiens.
Wow, thanks Miguel!
1. Gluten/grain/legume allergies exist a plenty and are likely under diagnosed. Celiac incidence numbers are big, as are other gut related issues in humans. For gosh sakes, don’t just use Google to get your numbers, go to the library for a day. Hot library chicks in person are better than internet porn (most days).
2. Meat allergies?
3. The link between chronically elevated insulin levels and fucked up die in a hospital with a bag attached to your body disease is as clear as the link between cigarette smoke and lung cancer, or the link between sex with prostitutes in Mexico and the clap. Yes, you read correctly, I’m saying that vegetarianism gives you the clap.
4. How do folks fair on a vegetarian diet, with zero gluten/grains/legumes? Answer: without supplements they end up subscribing to the New York Times, watching Rosie O’Donnell and they eventually end up lubricating their handguns with patchouli oil. Then, their weapons malfunction just as the violent criminal (meat eater) descends upon them. Afterward, they sell their “unreliable” handguns to buy more patchouli oil.
5. The notion that a diet optimized by evolution for reproductive fitness at a young age (low stress hormones, optimum endocrine function, low inflammation, strength with which to wrestle down your mate) is conducive to a longer and healthier life is very strange to me. Why is a healthy youth not associated with a healthy, longer life?
6. PETI: my new not for profit group “People for the Ethical Treatment of Intestines.”
7. In the end, I don’t believe Robb one bit. I say eat no meat, load up on grains, pasta, legumes. Skew that balanced diet to one low in fat and high in carbs. Please, please, chow down. My job depends on it. My company works in fields of cancer, inflammatory disease, and dyslipidemia.
Brad- point #7 is the most compelling for me…we need to keep you employed, so it’s grains & low fat eating to keep Brad fed & watered.
There should be a “not” before “conducive” in paragraph 5. Sorry, didn’t eat my Wheaties this morning, I’m late for work (I can hear the cells in the incubator screaming for chow) and I can’t see red so the spell checker never works for me. 🙂
Hi Robb,
Thanks for the help with the holiday nutrition plan. I get all these sorts of things pointed out to me from my family, non-paleoers, most of witch I can refute. Fortunately, I get some sort of pleasure from owning them 😉 and it gives me drive. The thing I hate most is when people who are uneducated (professionally or even self) give specific advice on nutrition. I get that they get told this stuff from the “experts” but they have no idea of any of the basic ideas or concepts. Actually, the thing I hate most is the ‘car analogy’. Our bodies are NOT like f*&%ing cars, we are ALOT more complicated.
I thought I’d give you the heads up on my blog (sorry for the self promotion). I won’t explore such technical issues as you do but more simple things, just trying to fight the good fight. And finally thank you, you and Ido, have sparked my interest in nutrition and your (both of you) depth of understanding makes me continually want to learn more.
Ed
Ed! That’s fantastic! Keep up the good work…don’t look for too many fights. Help the ones who want help…buggar the haters.
Robb,
Learned about your website at my Level 1 Cert last month and now check it (as well as CrossFit Endurance) at least once a week.
Excellent posting about nutrition and the whole CP flap as a whole.
I also have to say that Miguel Carrera’s reply to John was beautiful…well written, logical and fairly easy to understand…even for a English and History double major like me. I think it sent John scurrying to the library otherwise he would’ve responded by now.
Again, great info. Thanks for an awesome website.
Cheers.
Hi
An Evolutionary approach to Nutrition and Health could be the necessary template that this field needs, as Professor Loren Cordain has written in The Protein Debate.
Of course, this doesn’t deny the fact that there is genetic variation among individuals (but then again it also exist among gorillas and you wouldn’t assume that one should eat meat and the other bananas, since the basics are species specific). This genetic variation is why in the future (say 50 years), I suspect Nutrigenomics will be the way to go, but until then, Paleo along with paying attention to your body and regular blood and physical exams to adjust things when necessary is the next best thing.
All the best
Miguel
P.S: thanks Doc for the nice words and pardon my english, since I’m from Sevilla, Spain
So is anyone actually saying that a diet devoid of animal protein and made up of mostly soy protein will give you cancer or diabetes? It seems unclear to me in the comments section. Robb, are there any studies about this type of thing? I personally only eat fish and this debate has sparked my curiosity.
Kevin-
Yea, the Mcdougal/Campbell crowd recommend a starch based diet and hold ALL forms of protein as akin to poison. Get enough via diet to not die…no more. It would be a dream come true for our athletes to compete against teams who are fed and watered on the above protocol.
Robb,
As a non-scientist (pontificating on ideas is my thing), and a vegetarian, I have been able to follow most of this and understand what the hell you are talking about.
Here’s the thing, though. I am a vegetarian because I don’t want to eat animals that were tortured. I’m not trying to promote my beliefs here, simply explain that no matter what is said about the health benefits, if I think the cow was stuck in hell it’s whole life before it died, or the chicken was de-beaked and tormented..it’s not going in my body.
With the new advent of “cage free” and happy cows, etc., there may be more opportunities for me to bite into a steak or a chicken without having the urge to spit and vomit. But I’m not there yet.
I do eat fish… call me a hypocrite and maybe I am, but I don’t know that fish can be, or are tormented the way other animals are.
So given someone like me who simply can’t eat meat because of reasons that have nothing to do with health… could you help us figure out ways to get that protein we need?
If all it means is eating more fish, I can do that. If there are other ways to get good protein, please share! We are out here and want to get fit, strong, feel great, and not rely on empty carbs that make our butts and bellies hang!
Thanks – Eileen
Eileen-
This is a legit concern. Like you said, the advent of more humane farming practices mitigates this issue to a large degree, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The Least Harm Principle may be better served even with an approach approximating free-range meat production:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/r1277l2428v10637/
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/972951/posts
In essence, agriculture in NOT a bloodless endeavor.
All this considered, if you are ok with eating fish you can certainly pull this off just fine with only fish…but you are looking at 3-4 meals per day, every day with some fish in it! No problem for me, some folks would get bogged down with that. If you can add in some free range eggs, perhaps chicken, you will have much more variety and things would (logistically) be easier. Smart use of protein powders can certainly help…I know the ProteinPower message board has a vegetarian forum. Certainly worth checking that out.
Something to keep in mind in this:Economically, a vegetarian diet is NOT changing anything with regards to animal treatment, food quality etc. Voting with your money for small, family owned farms DOES affect change.
Thanks!!!! It looks like I will eat more fish. Again, while I can see that there are many angles to all of these LHP, Animal rights, etc. debates, the bottom line is whether I can find an appetite for meat. Maybe I will start looking for the happy cow meat and see where it takes me.
Thanks for your reply! Much appreciated!
Eileen from Crossfit Flagstaff
Thanks for the reply Robb.
Also on Eileen’s question as well. I only eat fish/eggs for the same exact reasons as she does and I find myself eating at least a can of tuna a day plus eggs.
The Web seems to provide convincing and contradictory information.
My doctor supports the conclusions of the China study, yet the Paleo diet appeals to common sense – eat what we’ve been consuming for tens of thousands of years. He’s rather skeptical of Paleo, and I don’t know where I’d find anything he’d consider worth reading about it. He favors fruits, mostly non-starchy vegtables and a little meat. High temp cooking like frying is not approved. Whole rice seems to be good in his book, while bread is not reccomended for me. I have health issues, so those reccomendations were adjusted for my case.
Without a firm scientific background its hard to sort of the “my study / your study” and miscellaneous factoids from the complete picture.
Just one question I can’t seem to find an answer on: raw vs cooked. One camp indicates essentially “cooking=bad” while another points out that fire has been in use for meals since, ah, when we grew thumbs. Even commonly available nuts arrive cooked: I haven’t seen a jar of raw peanut butter on the shelf recently.
Is there a scientific or medical forum which discusses the Paleo diet? It’s obviously better than, say, the Doritos and cheesburger diet, or the ’70s high carb diet, but there’s no debate about those. Is there a current forum where it’s discussed by folks with a formal science/medical background (which I don’t have)?
Re cooked vs raw: have some of both…seems to optimize nutrient intake.
Forums: Crossfit, Performance menu…numerous blogs.
Your comments in regards to the ‘inuit paradox’ seemed to skip over findings that osteoporosis in Inuit women is two-and-a-half times higher than your city dweller and ….there seems to be a strong epidemiological correlation between high meat intake and osteoporosis.
If that this correlation is true your ‘inuit paradox’ isn’t really a paradox.
Rui-
2.5x greater?! That is some very specific number spitting…care to share that resource? The anthropological records show NO increased rates of osteoporosis:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/5908114
I have that entire paper. If you’d like to have a discussion on this we can make a new blog post and you can make your point and I’ll make mine. I’d strongly recommend you re-read the literature, ORIGINAL literature, not the stuff that has been inaccurately referenced and assumed to be accurate.
I understand the reasoning behind the diet, but haven’t we already found hunter gatherer mummies WITH cancer and atherosclerosis? If I recall well, the Masai seem to have Atherosclerosis as well. People like McDoughall/Esselstyn try to prevent heart disease by all the ways we know how to: lowering cholesterol, eliminating omega 6 oils and adding flaxseed/chiaseed daily (ratio of Omega 6 & 3: 1:1 or 2:1), eating anti-inflammatory and antioxidant rich foods, and lowering body weight. It seems to be nutritionally adequate as well, since they supplement b-12. What I’ve seen so far does point to having lower cholesterol does help with avoiding atherosclerosis, so why eat all that meat and saturated fat that I’ve seen studies (and paleo/PHD forums as well) show raise?
Robb,
What are you thoughts about the empirical evidence that Colin Campbell and Caldwell Esselstyn, Jr. are both almost 80-years-old and healthy?
It’s hard to weigh your post against the fact that your livelihood depends on consulting/selling the paleo diet.
Chris- This is an incredibly limp-weenied argument. Campbel, Mcdougal, Ornish etc, etc, all make money from promulgating the vegan diet, so let’s but this logical fallacy aside and actually talk like big kids about “facts” shall we?
Dear Robb and Friends,
Preface: I believe in healthy debate and a broad and thorough diversity of perpectives! Also, you have built a forum here where we can perhaps robustly contribute to the veracity of the nutrition and food-as-medicine and more debate/s/discussion–which is more than I can say, so Thank You! And, finally, I have the utmost respect for professionals such as Dr. T. Colin Campbell–whose life’s work has been FAR more than a “pay day” I certainly believe–Dr. Loren Cordain, and others who have contributed much. That said…
As always, when one stands to be rewarded, especially financially, I can’t help but wonder, specifically here: Are your Paleo-orientations (especially business interests) likely the foundation for confirmation bias–i.e. seeing what you want to see in all the information you have compiled–and, subsequently possible cherry-picking of information to support your views (as extra-motivated by your paleo-orientation and extra-extra by your standing to gain in whatever ways), and finally then setting forth to undermine or down play any information that does not support or even opposes your views, premise/s and or personal/business interests? I think this is quite often, as I believe it is here, the most salient challenge and problem.
Just a few (of many possible) points of clarification:
1. Dr T. Colin Campbell does not advocate for a “vegetarian” diet as you reduced-to-him here, but rather a Whole-Food Plant Based (WFPB) one. He would, as he has, say that a vegetarian diet as practiced by the vast majority contains dairy products and, therefore, is contraindicated by the sum of supporting literature AGAINST their inclusion for human consumption.
2. The most compelling aspect of the Cordain v Campbell debate for me, which is predictably omitted here, is Campbell’s thoughful assertion that a diet that WAS eaten, historically, as viewed anthropolgically/archeologically/ethnogenetically, and was even selected for evolutionarily through selective mutation, etc. does/would not necessarily an ideal, whole, or well and balanced, modern “diet” or lifestyle-of-eating/best-food-practice make. Like his–Dr Campbell’s, like Cordain’s, like yours, and potentially like my own, ANY one of our orientations/biases must be objectively set aside in the pursuit of best practices in their totality. Additionally, his reminder that “gene expression” or Epigenetics–which I personally find to be one of the most truly wonderful, most woefully ommitted and underappreciated by those who presume, as some have been taught, that genes are the “cards that you [we] have been dealt,” and thereby is also a most hopeful miracle of our body’s complex capacities–trumps genetic and evolutionary biology in it’s more reductionist and static snapshots and, most importantly, to omit this reality of our body’s needs and remarkable adaptability in real time is not only to compare “apples to oranges,” but vastly worse, to compare meat–protein and fat and a relative few other nutrients–to…apples and oranges so to speak…as in to actually say, the incredibly rich and diverse array of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants, and nutrients including protein, especially those ONLY contained in the plant (and for that matter, the fungi) Kingdom/s. A more honest and complete overview–than that provided by you here–which still may be incomplete, but at least provides at least a sample of direct statements by Doctors Campbell AND Cordain, can be found here: https://www.catalystathletics.com/article/50/The-Protein-Debate-Dr-Loren-Cordain-T-Colin-Campbell/
3. As for the “Intuit Paradox,” not only does your link not work (“site does not exist” message), but the myth of exceptional health among those populations has been multiply, scientifically, objectively, and thoroughly debunked. Sadly, for one example that says it all, even a shift to the SAD (Standard American Diet) or a Western diet as it is often called, improved Intuit persons health outcomes in further research. The data is many, but here’s an excellent overview for those intersted:
https://nutritionfacts.org/2018/07/12/the-eskimo-myth/
4. Whether Dr. Cordain’s anthropo/acrheo-logical oriented views, Dr. Campbells WFPB ones, your Paleo, etc ones, or my own best efforts at consolidating and putting into objective practice a full diversity of perpectives and ideas it is A. Important that we continue the healthy debate in a respectful and thorough manner despite natural potential disagreements and even unexpected outcomes and B. To try, as I am afraid is needed here, to correct misinformation that may unfairly and unduly muddy the already-so-very-turbid waters. Should your journey have and/or continue to help amyone, that is a PLUS and kudos to you! If so, then I suspect it is because for most of us, trying ANYthing–structured and perhaps which is at least better than that which we have been doing–is better and also better than nothing! However, as with any confirmation or other biases, and as with any fallacy, that still does not make it a complete foundation on which to build our trust.
Otherwise, Best Wishes and Be Well!