For the month of September, I have decided to study the benefits and feasibility of completely eliminating grains from my diet. What does this include? Bread, pasta, rice, cereal, oatmeal, and beer, among other things. I can already imagine my readers closing their browsers, grabbing their car keys, and heading straight to the closest bagel shop.

I know, going grain free sounds crazy. My fiancee thinks it’s crazy. My friends think it’s crazy. And I don’t deny it’s somewhat difficult either. Certainly, it is more difficult than just cutting out dairy as I have previously done.

However, giving up grains is an inevitable part of exploring a Paleolithic diet and that’s exactly what I am going to do.

Are grains really necessary?
The old US food pyramid that was still valid two years ago recommended 6-11 servings of grains a day. Oh, so I can have 1000 of my calories per day come from pasta? Hmm… that doesn’t sound right.

The new food pyramid is more moderate, but it still requires that you eat several servings of grains per day and it only recommends that half of those be whole grains. Refined grains are widely accepted as being nutritional garbage.

It seems that the my government says I need to eat grains, but we’ve already seen that the government has made some poor nutritional recommendations in the past. Let’s see what the research says.

Research on whole grains
My skepticism for cutting out grains stems from the abundance of research on it’s health benefits. Here, I want to be brutally honest. I’m going to show you a whole bunch of studies that claim that whole grains are amazing for your health:

I’m so inspired that I want to perform a study of my own! I guarantee that I can show that eating 10 tablespoons of sugar per day promotes weight loss. All I would have to do is compare the average American to a group of Americans that consumes 10 tablespoons of sugar per day. Then I can tell everyone that 10 tablespoons of sugar per day and, by proxy, sugar in general promotes weight loss! Hot damn, I’m a genius. Time to get a major soft drink company to fund me.

There’s only one problem.

While the USDA recommends 10 tablespoons of sugar per day for healthy Americans, on average we actually consume twice that amount.

So when the study comes out and claims that 10 tablespoons of sugar helps you lose weight, a seemingly legitimate claim, everyone goes out and buys candy and soda. No one reads the study and sees that the real causes of the weight loss is consuming half as much sugar.

And as hard as I’ve tried, every study I find seems to compare diets rich in whole grains to diets rich in refined grains. Yes, of course whole grains are better than refined grains. Everyone admits this, especially Paleolithic dieters. So I think the studies need to say “Whole grains were found to be better than refined grains,” not that “Whole grains are good for you.” Is 10 tablespoons of sugar good for you? No, it’s only better than twice that much.

Maybe you can help me, but I can’t seem to find many studies that compares people eating whole grains to people eating no grains. I actually have found one:
First Controlled Study of Paleolithic Diet

Which leads into my next point.

Our ancestors didn’t eat this crap.
We just are not evolved to properly handle grains. I guess our society is obsessed with trying to fit the square block into the round hole. It ends up wreaking havoc on our bodies.

Many mainstream diets are entertaining the idea that grains aren’t the best food for you such at the Atkins, South Beach, and Sugar Busters diets, but nobody wants to suggest not eating them at all. It’s understandable in a way. Our government has told us that grains should constitute the foundation of our diet. Most people eat grains with every meal. The typical American breakfast is nothing but grains. Of course, our country isn’t known for the longest lifespans or the healthiest citizens either.

I’ll see where this takes me. And if you think it’s crazy as my friends do, check back on me in a month. If it’s so bad, I should be suffering from vitamin deficiency. But I do already feel fairly confident about three things:

  • There is little to no research done comparing whole grains to no grains.
  • I don’t see any nutrients found in grains that aren’t easily available from other sources (an example of the opposite case is meat). Many grains products have virtually no nutrients at all.
  • Grains are an evolutionary novel food. We haven’t had much time to adapt.

What can you eat?
I’m sure you’re all wondering what the hell I actually am going to eat if I can’t resort to bagels and english muffins. Me too.

For now you can consult http://www.paleofood.com/ to see some interesting Paleolithic recipes. Expect in the upcoming weeks to see several of my own recipes and examples of things I’ve bravely concocted for the advancement of science.

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