Good and bad in Paleo diets....

Today's Post: Monday, 7-25-2011

Today, Yahoo had an article about the recent trend to emulate the way people evolved to eat and the way they did up to about 10,000 years ago.

In many ways this is a good idea if not a great one.

a) It completely avoids most of the worst foods and drinks for your health –

---including refined grains, hydrogenated vegetable oils, cheap oils high in omega 6 such as corn and soy, and all soft drinks. It also contains very little added sugar except honey occasionally and in whole fruit.

b) It includes abundant and varied vegetables and whole fresh fruit. It also includes raw, unsalted, nuts which are superfoods with health OK oils and abundant vitamins and minerals. As long as you aren’t allergic to them, eating nuts will improve your health significantly. (Note that pesticides and herbicides were not around 10,000 years ago, so getting organic produce also helps you to eat this way.)

Both of those characteristics have been well tested to be critical to getting and staying healthy – and to avoiding excess fat and removing it!

c) It also includes wild caught fish from relatively unpolluted waters and other more natural animal protein foods that the low carb advocates found tend to help people avoid gaining fat or help in losing it.

But the strict version of the paleo diet does have three problems.

a) It leaves out several foods that have been shown to support good health.

It leaves out beans and lentils which are inexpensive sources of protein that studies show are low glycemic, support good health, and work well when added to an otherwise “paleo” diet to help people not be hungry when they otherwise eat only vegetables for fiber. So, beans and lentils help you stay or get free of excess fat too.

It leaves out extra virgin olive oil, which has tested as having abundant health protective properties.

And, it leaves out moderate amounts of red wine, which tends to benefit health when you don’t drink too much of it at a time or in any one day.

It also leaves out lowfat dairy foods that are not made with added dried milk. It leaves out whole grains even in moderation. And, it leaves out moderate amounts of full fat dairy from naturally fed cows.

These foods also have tested as good for your health as well.

b) As some people practice it, the paleo diet includes processed meat and full fat meats from grain fed animals. This is common in some low carb diets. But recent studies show that low carb diets heavy in these foods cause health problems even though they can work for fat loss. And, neither processed meats nor animals penned up and fed grains were around over 10,000 years ago as far as that goes.

c) By eliminating beans and lentils, lowfat milk, and some true whole grain foods, the paleo diet can be a bit on the expensive side to eat since it does not use these inexpensive sources of protein. (Super lean and fat trimmed meat and poultry from grain fed animals is almost OK and costs less than the better for you 100 % grass or pasture fed versions. One solution is to eat less meat and poultry and more beans and lentils and then eat the naturally fed versions but just less often.)

In summary: If you add back the more recent foods that became available before 100 years ago that test as supporting your health and eat a mostly paleo diet for the rest of your food otherwise, it is one of the best ways to eat.

You will be and stay in better health. And, you will be far less fat than the average person is now.

Lastly, since each of these components has been well tested individually, you don’t need to wait for the whole paleo diet to be tested on thousands of people in a controlled study to know what aspects of it work!