I'm with Proteus.

The paleodiet (by definition) is the only diet that is informed by the evolutionary sciences. There is a range of flavors within this information, from Audette's reverse engineering, to Cordain's statistical clinicalism.

How we define paleo and the purity with which it is followed (or CAN be followed) is at issue in this thread, now somewhat off topic. We've recognized two elements that enable a suitable definition: what was paleolithic foodstuff, and how narrowly we limit the food we eat to these included foods.

Keeping these two elements distinct will help us define paleo, to the extent that we know what the rest of us are talking about. As such, it will necessarily define who is eating paleo and who is not, but not be very supportive of marginal efforts. We don't want that. Like Nancy said, all of us want to encourage others who might take even the smallest bit of paleo to heart. I think everyone here would agree that each tiny step from processed to natural is a good one, and we don't want to discourage even halfarsed attempts.

Unfortunately for some, the list of foodstuff is defined by environmental science as we know it. You can find these lists in the books and on the internet. No dairy, no grains, no legumes, etc. I say "unfortunately" because excluding some of things from a diet is hard, and some stories have been concocted to justify continued inclusion.



It is true that "there isn't a huge amount of evidence that human populations evolved in similar environments", but while small, ALL the evidence we have indicates that human populations lived in identical environments, for nutritional purposes. All populations had access to animal foods, and plant foods limited by season and the technology to make them edible.

We also must be careful when defining paleo to avoid setting up straw men, like the assertion "that evolution stopped when domestication of animals or plants began". No one has said that, and in fact the evidence shows that there was massive selective pressure (including sexual, we presume) with the adoption of domestication. Bones tell the tale. Malnourishment of a grain-based diet and the scars of disease brought on by herding animals are found in the remains of these adopters.

The "variations" in the Paleo diet should be true variations, and currently the varieties are Audette and Cordain. Violations are not "variations". Again, we don't want to be too hard on paleo violations at the risk of discouraging adherence otherwise, but dairy on paleo is like sugared soda on Atkins.



No one has been a herder for a long, long time. For Europeans, it's 6000 years tops (I'm being generous here), and for a species that takes 15 years to reproduce (generous again), genetic adaptation within that time frame at that rate is not supported by science. Calling milk-drinking pastoralists like the Masai "paleo-like" supports our stories but not the paleodiet--the contradiction being obvious. We may have been fooled by their tribal organization and their strange dancing costumes, but hunter-gatherers they are not. And while their bodies and meat-eating are admirable, their years left to live as goat herders can probably be counted on one hand, for some of the same reasons that hunter-gatherers are no more.

Returning to our two elements (what food is paleo and who is paleo), we might be able to conclude that if paleo food is established, then paleo people is an all-or-nothing distinction. Establishing paleo food is probably more important for the purposes of this forum, designed to support others in their nutritional choices.

Who is paleo? Like the complaint "you're not doing Atkins", you're not doing paleo if you eat food unavailable to Homo in its environment of evolutionary adaptation. Exclusionary, and yuck. (I admit this is all Audette talking, so forgive me.)

Instead, we pose that there are shades of gray based on violations of the first element. This is inclusionary in a sense, but to the deprecation of purity. Also yuck, not helpful.

What we DO know is that no variety of the paleodiet says "this food is not paleo, but if you can tolerate it, then go ahead and eat it". "Tolerate" is a pretty good word, though, if we understand it to mean "doesn't make you sick to your stomach". One of the fundamentals of paleo (and of cell biology) is that even though we may not get immediately sick as a result of eating neolithic food, cell biology insists that proteins not expected by the human body creates all sorts of problems. And when compounded in loads present in a neolithic meal will overcome the resistance of immune function that has been built over millions of years. That's what immune function IS.

Lactase sufficiency is (no pun intended) not enough. That we tolerate milk sugars does not make the protein in milk any more expected after weening. Not farting like a baboon after a bean feast does not make lectin digestible. A lack of recognizable symptoms of food poisoning (to be honest) is not an indicator of nutrition.



Audette has presented paleo as a panacea, and Cordain has presented paleo as a prescription. Unfortunate. What men do to sell books!

In the context of this forum, paleo is not a starting point, it is a goal. An aspirational template. A depressing concept, since it seems that no matter where you are, there is always another step to take before you reach THE goal. Woe is us who don't have a scale to tell us when we've succeeded. Instead of numbers (20 grams of carbohydrate, 130 pounds goal weight), we have a theory.

How much we believe the paleo theory is what makes us paleo.

Hey, Caveman! I was kind of wondering when you might show up.

Points well taken, especially about food availability from an abstract level. (animal and vegetable matter, no grains, no dairy beyond weaning) I was actually talking more about the specific, and was sloppy in my language. Some of our micro evolution happened in environments with more meat on the hoof, others with fish or even seafood as another possible source. Some had fruit more available, some had less or none at all. It's more a matter of degrees rather than essentials.

I wish I could find the story, but there was a recent report of some evidence for genetic predispositions to milk tolerance in some populations, including northern European. This was reported as surprising because it seemed to have happened within a much shorter time frame than is normally thought possible for such a genetic selection. It may be wishful thinking, but I'm not sure we know all the details yet. But until we do, I'll grant you that dairy was definitely not on the diet of paleolithic peoples.

As for paleo as a goal, an ideal, that's fine. As you say, it is almost an unattainable goal. For me, it's a way of figuring out the best way for me to live the rest of my life. Starting with the whole foods of our ancestors and then seeing what else of variety I can add that still doesn't poison me too much. As I said, it is a baseline from which I work, not a goal to be achieved. That's why I don't claim to be paleo perfect.

Plane

Hey, this has become very interesting. I can see both angles. That is, Paleo as a baseline, and Paleo as a theory, unattainable yet available for closer and closer approximation.

The latter concept has been one that I have espoused, and I think my writing skills may have made me misunderstood on so many occasions. Perhaps it is clarified here.

My point has always been that I am comfortable with, I can live with, and even take delight in a "diet" that I can NEVER fully abide by. We're all human, and this is a uniquely human experience. And I hate to compare it to this, so please forgive this atheist, but it is, to an extent, LIKE a religion.

In the Christian religion, for instance, aren't followers expected to do what is right and good all the time, but at the same time also expected to fail? That's how I look at Paleo eating, and I'm comfortable with that, though I don't do rain dances or attend revivals (Been tempted on the rain dance, though.)

TheCaveman and Plane, you guys have made some very interesting points to ponder.

Yup! And I do relish sinning.

LOL. Hilarious, Nancy! Me too. But I'm trying to live by the Good (paleo) Book. Wherever it is...

I eat mainly meat and eggs--I do eat spinach salads, broccoli and cauliflower but life's too short to eat stuff you don't like.

Hi there I am butting into this thread to hopefully jump on and get your thoughts and ideas for this new eating adventure ...

I want to change my eating and settle in it...instead of constantly looking for trigger foods and climbing ladders and crap (I dont mean it is crap for all I just mean I am tired of doing this again and again when I slip up I want things to be the same forever now) ..I just want to (and honestly always have wanted to) eat as close to the source food as grown as possible ..in season if possible and as absolutely fresh as possible...grains, beans, sugar, have all done me no good ..(dairy I am on the fence about still as I really do appreciate and love yogurt and cheese, butter and cream but I will think about that later) I have in my life worked hard to try to do this ...even with all the diets I have embarked on I still end up falling for sugar and white flour ..poison! it is not even funny anymore how bad these foods not only ruin my weight but they ruin my mood, my behavior and my resolve!

finding and preparing wonderful high quality food is a passion for me and one that will be with me until I die ..but what the type of food is is also important I believe as to how long my life will be and how high quality it is ..

I am a nurse .and with that I can tell you that the bulk of the patients I care for have problems that are obesity related ..it is a relentless struggle for me at my work to try to encourage people to improve the quality of their lives by watching diets moving ect...

bottom line I love how this all sounds ..have the advantage I guess because other than my lapses with baking with the white stuff ..I do not eat crapfood at all ..nothing processed nothing bagged or bottled with a list of ingredients on it .(except my gum habit that is awful and ending now) .I like things to look like they grow before I prepare them...and it is not a fleeting wish to eat in the paleo style ..I do need something new to shake up my resolve and get me back on track ..and this as I read it comes so close to my thoughts that foods should be as I said above, fresh, close by, seasonal and not processed ...

so with your help I would love to try this and hopefully give up ladder climbing once and for all ...just settle into a lifestyle full of fresh healthy foods!

thanks for letting me slam myself in the middle of this thread ...I am thankful to Atkins for helping me learn how to do low carb and really understand how white food causes me to have my insane eating periods...but it is time for me to find a way just to eat forever ...so this adventure is totally exciting and off I go!

Heidi

I own a small farm and agree with Proteus that almost any local, sustainably raised food is healthier, tastier and cleaner than anything you get in the grocery store. In fact, that was what drew me to buying my own farm ten years ago... to be able to raise my own chemical-free, poison-free food. There is no question that sustainably raised food does taste better than even organic grocery store stuff, which tends to taste better than conventionally raised stuff. Nor does it have to be more expensive than conventional.

Last January, I bought a quarter share of local, sustainably raised beef (no pesticides, no chemicals or hormones, very little grain) and it was the best beef I'd ever eaten... so good in fact, that I decided to raise my own beef from now on. That quarter of beef yielded over 100 lbs of mixed cuts (some bone-in for soups, at my request) and organs (some each of liver, heart and tongue) and cost $250. There's no way you could buy that quality of beef in the grocery store (never mind butcher shop) for $2.50/lb. One hundred pounds sounds like a lot, but didn't even half-fill my full-size freezer. Don't have a stand-alone freezer? Buy a mini-freezer or split a quarter cow with 3-4 friends.

The problem I see with many Paleo diet defenders is, there seems to be a feeling that Paleo eating is healthier than any other diet, simply because they're eating like someone thinks we evolved to eat... except if you are buying meat from the grocery store, especially the big box stores like Walmart, you're just as unhealthy as anyone else. Those who say there is little to no difference between organic food and conventionally raised know very little about the secret, ugly underside of agri-business.

All agri-business meat, no matter what kind--fish, fowl, pork or ruminant--has been fed just two things for the last two months of their lives: 90% corn and 10% soybeans, boosted with a few manufactured enzymes and vitamins to keep them alive; they don't need to be ~healthy~, they're going to die in two months anyway. With chickens (whether meat or egg-layers) and fish, that is ALL they eat, ALL their lives. With feedlot beef cattle, this is ALL they eat, for the last two months of their lives... no hay, no grass, none for the last two months of their lives.

"Well," you might think, "not ideal, but I guess I could live with that if it means cheaper meat." EXCEPT, because this extremely unnatural diet wreaks havoc on their immune systems, most agri-biz animals are fed antibiotics from the moment they start eating it, especially poultry and cattle. Cattle particularly cannot tolerate an all-grain diet and need the antibiotics to stay alive long enough to be fattened and then killed... and this all-grain, antibiotic diet is what has caused the killer E-coli 0157:H7 and the MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus) bacteria to flourish.

Worse, 60-70% of corn and 90% of soybeans (except organic ones, of course) are GMOs, called Round-Up Ready....a glyphosate weedkiller, which means the plants can be sprayed with Round-Up 2-3 times a growing season and NOT DIE. The land is sprayed once before seeds are planted to knock down all the weeds, once during the growth period to knock down the weeds, and again before harvest to knock down the weeds... and the Round-Up Ready sprayed plants don't die. I've seen it myself, and I KNOW there is no way those seeds have not absorbed any of that poison, because any animal in its right mind refuses to eat that stuff unless it is forced to from hunger. My goats and chickens refuse to eat that stuff.

Scarier yet, weeds are evolving to become resistant to Round-Up, so now Monsanto, et al, are developing stronger poisons. Those poisons are on and in the grain, eaten by the animals, and then stored in the animals' fat... which we eat. If you must eat commercial meat, then at least cut off ALL the fat and eat only the leanest meat.

Farmers have the highest rate of cancer deaths... I have known many many many who have died horribly of bone cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, as well as Parkinson's and other diseases, from a lifetime of spraying these poisons on the plants we all directly or indirectly eat.

Commercial food is not safe... and those who truly care about their health would avoid all conventionally raised foods and buy organic or sustainably raised, as much as possible. But, that's just my opinion....based on what I know and have seen first-hand.

Sorry if I bored anyone or trod on any toes, but I really cannot remain silent when someone says there is no difference between sustainable-organic and agri-biz foods.

Sagehill, I feel the way you do about this, although my knowledge base is much scarcer than yours.

What I buy from my local farmer's mkt does taste better, and I do not doubt that it is healthier for me and the planet. I think what we see in this area is that if something is not convenient, or is too expensive, or somehow doesn't fit in to someone's comfort zone, then all kinds of reasons are invented to to justify not changing. It's an addiction, really, and we all have our devils in our ears....

I see you are trying to prove a point here, but I think you feel a bit off the wagon on this one. Lets see I gained 64 lbs, eating anything I wished, like the rest of the world. Then I lost 64 lbs, when I went to the Paleo way of eating, even though I still bought corporate crops, and meat. So even if you eat the super market junk, but select the types of foods that were around in the Paleo era, such as meat, vegetables and fruit, you are still better off than bread, beans and dingdongs. I don’t believe I am healthier than someone that hunts for their own wild game, and gathers their own vegetables and fruit directly from nature, but I do believe I am healthier than the Twinkie Eating, Pasta consuming, pizza devouring me from before.

Should I be working on getting more organic food to eat, sure I should, part of the reason why I get lots of vegetables from the parents gardens, during the summer.

But, you are acting like you have to go to an extreme to get healthier. Perhaps you do for the optimal perfect health, but to become healthier, all you have to do is eat better than you did. Many people here are taking a step away from conventional foods for the first time, some have done this several times, but telling them they have to go to a 100% all organic diet or they are no better off is just plain B.S.
Your post reminds me so much of the old Vegan scare tactic approach.

I have done this Paleo diet, and still ate foods from stores and fast food places, very little organic foods and I still lost weight, I had a ton more energy, and I seemed to be much healthier over all, could I have been even healthier long term going all organic, well I bet I could have.

So understand I am not saying that going fully organic wouldn’t be even better, but I have to insist that taking the first step has to be better than taking no steps at all.

If you're lucky enough to live in an area where you can afford to buy pasture raised, organic meat, huzzah for you! But where I live the nearest cattle farms are probably 5-8 hours away and organic grass-fed beef costs close to $20 a pound. I'm not poor, but I'm not able to spend that sort of money on food.

Most chicken is raised without antibiotics. Chickens have very, very short lives when they're raised for food, I think they're slaughtered at about 4 weeks, if I recall correctly. Yes, they're probably grain fed. I eat a lot of chicken. Organic chicken is much less expensive too.

Anyway, I do the best with what is available and try not to indulge in all-or-nothing thinking. I don't think there's any benefit to thinking that if we can't 100% recreate paleo eating then we should just chuck it all. I already know I have gained an enormous benefit from getting grains and dairy out of my diet. I'd love to have fish caught from unpolluted seas and streams, meat raised on their proper diet, but that just isn't the world we live in now unfortunately.

BTW: I recently stopped taking the drugs I had been taking for 2 years for my autoimmune arthritis and so far so good.

Actually, most are slaughtered at 6-8 weeks, and they ARE fed antibiotics... all of them (unless organic) for the first 3-4 weeks of their lives and some for the entire time (less withdrawal time of 3-4 days for butchering), depending on how crowded the birds are. Most chickens and turkeys are kept so crowded that they can barely move around... when they are that crowded, they HAVE to have antibiotics or they die.

From http://www.eatwild.com/farmers.html:
Spending three hours in an indoor commercial poultry operation can cause inflammation. Commercial chicken houses are so crowded that there may be less than three-quarters of one square foot per bird. As many as 25,000 chickens are packed into one shed. This overcrowding creates high levels of ammonia fumes and fecal dust. A recent study determined that people who spend only three hours in such a building will experience "acute inflammatory reaction in the upper airways and increased bronchial responsiveness."

To get an idea of the crowding, check out the commercial poultry photo on the above link. Eatwild also has a news bit that as of November 1st, Russia will no longer buy poultry products from 17 US processing plants: http://www.eatwild.com/news.html . That's scary, in my opinion.... meat so polluted and gross that even Russia won't buy it.

I've raised meat chickens for ten years, and I ~KNOW~ that chickens are fed antibiotics because it's nearly impossible to find baby chick feed without have antibiotics because antibiotics are considered insurance against chick mortalities. For the first five years I paid nearly double for antibiotic-free gamebird (pheasants, ducks, etc) chick feed since antibiotics kill gamebird chicks, but stopped when I went soy-free. Now I get a soybean-free mix of grains that the mill grinds specially for me, plus I give them goat/cow milk for complete protein.

As for finding good meat even in the city, look on the net, look in your yellow pages. There are plenty of small farms much closer than you think... just have to track them down. Look at the classifieds, I'm sure there will be some ads mentioning home-raised meat. This is a growing industry! They are out there, just not in the mainstream yet. Many farmers raise just a couple of beeves a year, yet don't want a whole beef and need someone to split a side or mixed quarter with... track them down! Place an ad yourself if necessary.

Also, check out these links:
http://www.eatwild.com/products/index.html
http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.html


Think outside the box. For example, though this is a raw dairy link (http://www.realmilk.com/where1.html, click on your state, find some farms relatively close to you, call them and ask if they either sell meat privately or know farmers who would. Most farmers are hurting financially, I know I am, and would be thrilled for the opportunity to make more money.


To make it more specific for those in San Diego:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&...om/farmers.html

Yes, I'm passionate about this topic... most people have no clue at all at how appalling our meat industry really is. I'm just trying to do all I can to make people aware that mass-produced food simply is not healthy and can, in fact does, make us sick.

Jenny

Thanks for providing the links.
They will come in handy when I am ready for Step 2, or perhaps step 3.
Right now I am still in step 1, stay Paleo for a year.

Later I plan to reduce even more none Paleo items from my diet, and eventually look for truly organic items for all my food sources, but like I said, first thing first, if I try to do it all at once, I will surely fail like so many times before.

Do you know how long they are been pumping food full of all this stuff.
You hear of people eating all kinds of bad stuff that are still living to 80,90 even some into 100, but was the food they ate full of all this stuff for only a small part of their lives, or all of their lives.
The way you make it sound, it sounds like if we eat store bought meats, we will all die in a decade or so, so this makes me ponder the impact this has on expected longevity.
What do you think, do you believe store bought meats will remove a year, 5 years, 10 years, etc off your life expectancy?
Just Curious.

I think I confused hormones and antibiotics. I believe that most chickens are not given hormones.

I've used those links too. But if you live in San Diego like I do, there simply are no farms raising meat products anywhere near here. Land is far, far too expensive until you start getting into central CA, even up there it is expensive. Not to mention issues with water. It is just going to get worse as they stop letting us have water from the CO river due to an endangered fish. And to have sufficient grass you need to have sufficient water and we simply don't. Those people that are raising organic meats are already selling them and probably making huge profits on those $18.00 a pound items in Whole Foods market. I go to our local farmers market and we simply don't have meat products being sold there.
*sigh*

That link you provided, all the farms are no where near So. CA.