The Argument Against Cereal Grains | Hacker News Reader

The Argument Against Cereal Grains

paleonu.com

19 pointsunignorant30 comments

Humans haven't stopped evolving in the 8000 years since grains were cultivated. It would seem logical that changes allowing grains to form an effective part of the diet would have occurred. Take the example of milk - humans in heavy cattle dependent parts of the world (ie: most everywhere except north east asia) produce enzymes allowing its digestion into adulthood. So can we now digest grain effectively?

For comparison: a mutation in one gene giving a 1% increase in survival chance will reach 50% saturation in a population in an average of 100 generations. For humans that's 2500 years or so.

What I'm saying is that if you don't have a genetic disposition to gluten intolerance you're likely to be perfectly ok with grain.

No need to guess, though. You can buy a cheap blood sugar monitor and run experiments on postprandial (after eating) blood glucose levels. Some people are more carbohydrate sensitive than others, and high postprandial blood sugar is associated with diabetes and heart disease. Here's a post from Dr. William Davis -- sorta my hero -- on the subject:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/more-on-blood-suga...

Furthermore, cutting out grains is an easy experiment you can try for a month or so at little effort/cost. If you're like most people, you'll drop 10-20lbs without effort, and your hunger will markedly subside.

That's an excellent point. In fact, the rate of human evolution is hundreds, possibly even a thousand times faster than it was in paleolithic times. Less than 15,000 years ago, nobody had lactose tolerance or blue eyes as an adult. Now, lactose tolerance is the norm and blue eyes are no longer uncommon.

http://www.dailytech.com/Life+in+the+Fastlane+Human+Evolutio...

IIRC lactose tolerance is only believed to have become endemic since about 8000 years ago, incidentally right around when agriculture hit the big time.

I wonder if the control of pasture lands necessitated the higher calorific quantity an animal provides when it is milked. Less herd land means a farmer would need to extract more calories per animal to survive. Similarly less migration also means less danger and higher populations, which again require more calories per animal to sustain.

That was exactly what I was thinking. Lactose tolerance is a very recent biological evolution, so much so that there can be marked differences within an individual population. For instance, there's 30% more lactose intolerance in the South of France than in the North of France.

It seems to be a trend that in the Medetarranian areas where fishing is more readily available throughout the year that lactose intolerance is higher. Despite a very short geographical distance, the percentage differences are huge. Sicilians for example have ~70% intolerance, Italy on average has ~35% tolerance, while just over the border in Switzerland you're down to 10%.

The differences can also be seen within a very, very short geographical range. For instance the Basques, a Spanish population historically centred around the Pyrenees (mountains) have the lowest intolerance in the world at 0.3%, while the non-basque Spanish have 15% tolerance, literally from not living on the herding steppes.

The latest period at which Native Americans could have migrated is at 12,000 years ago. In this period of time they have acquired zero lactose tolerance. However in the same time period, the Siberian peoples who the Native Americans came from became lactose tolerant. Assuming the highest rate posted for Russians their lactose intolerance is ~60%, however this is a dubious figure considering population exchanges between the Mongolian and Siberian populations (they're a political divide on a single Eurasian Steppe, it seems highly doubtful that genes would have stopped their spread for our political niceties 2,000 years in the future). Assuming the Mongolian percentages, Siberians likely now have a lactose intolerance rate in the single digits. This compares to the non-steppe population in 'Inner Mongolia' (China) who hit at about 87% intolerance.

With the vast divide between lactose tolerance on such an incredibly short scale of time and distances, I highly doubt we wouldn't have evolved some sort of gluten tolerance, especially considering the vastly higher percentages of lactose intolerance compared to gluten intolerance.

Let's put it this way, unless you're a Spanish Basque, your greatest concern for adverse health effects in a sustainable diet is dairy. The Dutch, Swedes and Mongolians of the Steppe are the next to be concerned. Anyone else, be concerned when your doctor diagnoses you, because otherwise you're as dumb as a dog chasing its tail.

"All plants tend to be in a contest with predators who might consume them."

I think the opposite is true in the age of agriculture. Your plant genes will propagate if McDonalds likes you in their buns.

Some of the most sophisticated bits of agriculture are devoted to resisting common predators (especially insects), making it easier to kill the predators/pests without killing the crop, etc.

Monsanto wouldn't be a bazillion dollar company if their GMO tomatoes were, like, really really redder than regular tomatoes.

I've been on a kick lately to plant a garden and studying permaculture. The argument permaculturists make is that in a diverse ecosystem, like a forest, everything is in balance, so pests are not as big a problem. For example, a permaculture garden would have chickens on it to eat the fly larva before they can infest the crops. With permaculture, there is no need for Monsanto.

In monocultures, i.e. traditional farms, the tilling exposes the worms to the sun and birds and they are killed. Without worms, there is no life in the soil and the nutrients must be replaced by petrol based fertilizers. With permaculture, there is no need for fertilizer because the plants die and are composted and returned to the soil.

Anyway, point being, if we never used these companies' products to destroy the natural order of things, we'd have more productive land and no need to GMO tomatoes.

I don't mean to be preachy. I just discovered permaculture within the past week or so and it really meshes with my hacker mind. The gardening world calls permaculturists "geeks" as well. If you're looking into gardening or sustainability, check out permaculture.

Rephrase that to "pests are not as big a problem for the remaining plants" because the ones that had a problem with pests are dead!

I don't like monocultures either, but I can assure you that adding chickens directly to your garden won't help much: they'll eat your tender young plants in addition to the pests. But their manure is excellent fertilizer: my potatoes were huge last year.

However, I do take issue with the statement that "we'd have more productive land..." We wouldn't: compare "natural" farming anywhere in the world with the US approach of modern fertilizers and soil management techniques (annual tilling is frowned upon for a number of reasons) and, yes, GM plants and the yields are incomparable. There are a lot of things to be said against Monsanto, et al, but lower crop yield isn't one of them. Farmers aren't stupid: growing food is an expensive and unpredictable business and they'll take what advantages they can get.

The argument I’ve heard¹ is that industrial-scale farming is very labor-efficient and organic permaculture techniques are very acreage-efficient. The techniques I’ve read about are a little more involved than “take the existing garden and add chickens”.

¹I haven’t researched this issue thoroughly enough to form my own judgement. Given what my children do to our back yard, experimenting with permaculture there would be an act of cruelty to the plants.

The chicken example was concerning the cycle of flies in fruit trees. You're right, they will eat anything people will eat, including your lovely garden. But companion planting, like marigolds in tomatoes is also a permaculture design principle. Wormwood, the stuff in absinthe, is also good for chickens to keep away some parasites.

For anyone interested, it's definitely more complicated than I'm describing here (but not by much). Go to a video search site like bing or google and search for permaculture and filter by videos longer than 20 minutes. There's a wealth of information on it. Look for stuff about about Forest Gardens. There are several videos about Sepp Holzer in Austria who grows everything you can imagine. Really spectacular stuff!

As sethg said, by "more productive" I mean more food per acre. I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre. The reason is because you have nut trees at the top, fruit trees below that, followed by bushes, herbaceous, root plants, then vines and climbers spread throughout.

In a monoculture, you have just one layer of productivity: a field of potatoes with no trees. An apple orchard with no herbaceous plants or vines. It's like a web server at 15% capacity. Permaculture is to agriculture what virtualization is to I.T. Infrastructure.

* I've heard with permaculture, you can feed 10 people on an acre*

I'd be surprised it it wasn't even more than that if done carefully! You're right that by mixing plant types, you can achieve better density and get a synergistic effect (another example is planting garlic/onions next to potatoes to repel potato bugs). One problem with large commercial farms is that in order to reduce the labor needs you have to plant at a density that makes it easier for mechanized equipment to harvest and that means that you must generally separate crops.

I have seen research projects that used robots to plant seedlings: typically a very labor intensive task. I'm thinking that if you could build robots/smarter machines that could harvest a wide variety of crops instead of just e.g, what a combine can process, then greater density & improved crop mix could be achieved.

I've always enjoyed food gardening and more recently I've been thinking of ways to apply technology to large gardens/small farm plots to reduce the dependence on my very limited free time. The problem is that now my free time would be shifted from gardening to robotics research :-)

The author argues that “Fully 1% of the population has celiac disease, with 97% of these currently undiagnosed” as one of his arguments against eating gluten-containing cereal grains, but he is much less concerned about dairy products, even though lactose intolerance is far more prevalent¹, especially among non-whites, than celiac.

¹see http://www.aafp.org/afp/2002/0501/p1845.html

"...it has been qualified as a fad diet by the National Health Service of England and American Dietetic Association."

"A criticized 3 week trial with the Paleolithic diet, in 20 healthy volunteers of which 6 dropped out and only 6 of the remaining had complete dietary information available, showed variable results. During the trial calorie consumption decreased 36% leading to significant weight loss. However, adverse changes in serum calcium were observed.[147] The NHS Knowledge Service states that there are several limitations to this particular study and that "readers should not draw too many conclusions from it."[148] Also, the Halford Watch refers to this study as "bad science".[149]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleo_diet

The author makes some good points but... cereal grains are delicious...

You can't beat a Duracell AA made with real genuine corn products, it just wouldn't be the same if they replaced the cereal calories with beef drippings.

I stopped eating wheat entirely on Jan 1, as well as most other grains, lost 25 lbs effortlessly, energy shot up, and my LDL cholesterol dropped precipitously. Though I now am sold on the notion that grains are simply nature's way of making you fat, some of the paleo folks go to opposite extremes. For example, IIRC, Dr. Harris (of the paleonu blog above) recommends heavy cream in your coffee. Perhaps this is ok, heartwise, but I think the jury is still out on the long term effects of saturated fat (cancer, etc...)

Similar story here. I stopped eating all grains on April 4, 2009. Essentially the same effects that you mention. I also experienced an abrupt end to 40 years of troubles with insomnia. (Someday I'll write an article called "How I Accidentally Conquered Insomnia".)

That's an interesting anecdote. I know a number of Japanese who moved to the US for school, stayed the same weight for a while, but then gained 10+ kilos of fat when they stopped eating rice or noodles every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Clearly, some of the worlds longest lived people (Japan #1, HK #2) do very well on diets with a far larger portion of their calories coming from grains than the typical American or English diet.

This isn't to say that there aren't any heavy meat-eaters, or especially fish-eaters in the world who remain healthy. But on the whole, meat consumption is strongly correlated with lifestyle diseases and shorter lifespans, when comparing populations of similar wealth.

It's unclear to me how you arrive at the conclusion that the Japanese eat a far larger portion of grains than the standard american diet. I'd like to see some clear statistics on that. One thing I've read is that americans simply eat more calories, period, which would help account for your anecdotal observations.

Furthermore, it may be that the Japanese diet has a number of healthy side effects that counteract their rice consumption: seaweed, high omega-3's in fish, natto (source of K2), etc... Country by country comparisons are famously problematic (see "Good Calories, Bad Calories") because there are so many variables to consider.

Finally, I'm not suggesting "eliminate grains and eat more meat," rather "eliminate grains and eat more vegetables."

I have read the statistics before-- in the 70's 70% of their calories came from rice alone, and even now, nearly half their calories come from rice and over 70% from carbohydrates in general.

I've also lived with several Japanese people. A bowl of rice is eaten at almost every single meal, including breakfast. It is true that the diet has become westernized and meat and fat consumption have gone up in the past 40 years... but so have their rates of heart disease and diabetes.

I don't have as much familiarity with HK diets, but they are also eat rice, noodles or dumplings at almost every meal, and eat less meat, and dairy than Americans. Having lived most my adult life in Taiwan, I can say with absolute certainty that from this side of the world, the US diet looks absurdly high in meat and junk food and severely lacking in whole grains, vegetables and fiber.

Edit: It's also uncommon for people here to worry about adding more protein and more meat to their diets like people in English speaking countries do. It's not even on the radar.

It's hard to take seriously a diet that says:

"2. Start eating proper fats - Use healthy animal fats or coconut fat to substitute fat calories for carbohydrate calories that formerly came from sugar and flour. Drink whole cream or coconut milk."

Now I am not a big fan of cereals myself (I prefer greens) but to push animal fat...

I would really like some serious studies for the Paleo fad. I strongly believe it will have some disastrous effect on the long term. Kinda' like Atkins had.

For a good lauch, read the dude's meal plan:

http://www.paleonu.com/panu-weblog/2009/11/13/what-i-eat.htm...

I would LOVE to know about the state of his arteries in about 10 to 15 years.

His arteries will probably be like those of many other heavy meat-eaters, but it's not his arteries that concern me. Check out his response to the 3rd commenter on that page, who mentioned that her son doesn't follow the paleo fad diet:

"Your son, do you light his cigarettes for him, too? I am a nazi about not having bread in the house- maybe that's stupid but the only poison I'll supply to guests is whisky and wine."

It's one thing to be a fringe nut-case who rejects the empirical findings of mainstream dietary research, but imposing the same on one's children is very disturbing.

It's also hard to take seriously anyone who claims to be "paleo" but eats a lot of dairy. I start trying to picture a hunter-gatherer sneaking up on a wild bison for a quick teat squeeze.

Grains, on the other hand, they could do. I've taken courses on primitive hunting/gathering, and grass seed was one of their basic survival foods. Wild rice was a staple for some amerindian tribes.

He's not eating paleo, just plain ol' Atkins.

Billions of healthy, lean, long-lived Asians might be surprised to hear that rice is bad for them.

My uninformed stance: Eating grains is good, in moderation. Having about half of your calories come from corn (as is the case for most people in the US) is not good. Using corn syrup instead of sugar as a sweetener is not good.

Diversity good. Monoculture bad. For soil and for the body.

For the individual, the early (grain-based) agricultural diet was starkly inferior to that of the hunter-gatherer. Once the population gets to a certain point, people have to adopt agriculture; the alternative is fishing/hunting the available stock into extinction, and then starving. However, agriculture can support a larger population, by about an order of magnitude. Having 10 times as many people, in mediocre health, won out.

he tries to arge that now we can have 10x in good health.

But i fail to see too much science there... I will continue eating all grains, except corn and soy.

Grains have their place, as a source of complex carbohydrate calories. They're low on nutrition, but high on calories, and as long as one understands this (useful) purpose I don't see a problem. Calories are necessary, to a point. Throughout much of history, high energetic content was an advantage. Medieval peasants ate 2-3 times as many calories as we eat today, because they worked them off in the fields.

Especially now, it wouldn't be healthy to eat 2000 calories/day in red meat or fish, much less 5-6000. It's not really possible to eat that many calories' worth of blueberries. This is where staple crops come in.

Of course, no one who is food-conscious should be eating refined grains such as white bread, because those are essentially pure sugar.

oh you mean Atkins Diet!

I do believe various humans account for various needed best diets. Simply because our lineage is all a little different. Some people come from the first farmers who were probably harvesting some type of cereal crop. Others come from nomads or hunters...

Just don't be fooled into thinking there is one "diet" to fit everyone.

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