I’m an Omnivore

Last month, I explained Why Paleo Is the Healthiest Diet Possible. One of the underlying topics I covered was the role of natural selection in human evolution.

I think that understanding human evolution is the single most important step to understanding nutrition.

Here’s the thing. As I said last time, people misunderstand or reject evolution more often than not. While reading one reader’s comment on that post, I cringed:

Evolution is a response to the idea that adaptation will either kill us or make us better/fitter/more adapted. So, by eating grains, potatoes, and yes, even milk, I’m ensuring that my children can digest a wider range of foods than my ancestors could.

Wow! I don’t think it works quite that way. I felt that this reader was misguided, but understandably so. There is such a strong anti-evolution, even an anti-science, bias in this country that it’s amazing anyone learns anything about it at all.

I hope I don’t come across as a jerk for this post. I’m not an expert and I won’t pretend to be one. I just want to share my own understanding of natural selection.

I wrote a quick and dirty genetic algorithm. Genetic algorithms are specialized computer programs that mimic real evolutionary mechanisms to solve problems. Therefore, they’re a good way to show how natural selection works. My genetic algorithm attempts to simulate a small population (20) of organisms of the same species. Here’s how it works:

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Many people that get introduced to the Paleo diet dismiss it immediately as nonsense. They attempt to find quick ways to disregard the entire idea, so they can go on believing that their diet is just fine.

Understanding Evolution
One of the primary reasons that the Paleo diet hasn’t become more popular is because of people underestimating, misunderstanding, or completely rejecting the theory of evolution. Unfortunately, the latter case appears to be very prevalent here in America (where we also enjoy the highest obesity rate in the world):

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I’ve got three pretty awesome, or at least wierd, YouTube videos concerning the Paleo diet.

This a trailer for “The Paleo Diet.” I really found the part around 1:10 hilarious: “It was created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. IT’S MYTHOLOGY!”
Now here’s a great video explaining why the Paleolithic diet makes sense. This guy also talks about raw food/cooked food. He has some other interesting videos on health as well. This is a 10 minute long video (longest you can put on youtube usually) of a guy eating a raw chicken. I just wanted to throw that out there, so you’ve been warned! Don’t take this the wrong way. I’m not condoning eating raw meat and I’m not sure how crazy it is. I barely eat raw anything right now. That’s not to say I won’t change that sometime in the future. But in any case, this is an intriguing video to me. Some vegans actually argue that we are made for veganism because we would be repulsed be eating raw meat. I have to disagree. I think a very hungry person, especially one who hasn’t been spoiled on cooked, seasoned everything, wouldn’t have difficulty doing it at all.

Imagine, for a moment, our ancient ancestors. Imagine them hunting, gathering, and traveling great distances. Imagine the constant threat of danger.

Now what happens if one of them gets sick?

It seems to me that our Paleolithic ancestors couldn’t have gotten sick as often or with the same severity that we do. It would have been a death sentence.

Yes, we live in heavily populated areas and germs are spread easily, but I don’t think that’s the only answer. Germs constantly invade our body. Your body has mechanisms to fight these invaders, that is if your immune system is functioning properly.

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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.

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I can’t believe I didn’t catch this earlier, but it appears the first controlled study of a Paleolithic diet was conducted recently in Lund, Sweden. Several researchers have compared traditional diets that are similar to the Paleolithic diet in nature in the past, but never has a controlled study been performed.

The main conclusion of the study was that a paleolithic diet controls symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes better than a traditional Mediterranean diet. :

The main result was that the blood sugar rise in response to carbohydrate intake was markedly lower after 12 weeks in the Paleolithic group (–26%), while it barely changed in the Mediterranean group (–7%). At the end of the study, all patients in the Paleolithic group had normal blood glucose.

The improved glucose tolerance in the Paleolithic group was unrelated to changes in weight or waist circumference, although waist decreased slightly more in that group. Hence, the research group concludes that something more than caloric intake and weight loss was responsible for the improved handling of dietary carbohydrate. The main difference between the groups was a much lower intake of grains and dairy products and a higher fruit intake in the Paleolithic group. Substances in grains and dairy products have been shown to interfere with the metabolism of carbohydrates and fat in various studies.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070627225459.htm

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