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Comment by tmsh | Hacker News Reader

The link to the Paleolithic diet made me think that one strategy against increasing addition is to normalize for evolutionary time. Still requires a lot of learned, subjective insight. But basically, anything that has proved itself via evolution is more sturdy and is worth congregating around (these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.).

Bravo on another great essay though. This made me smile:

You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly.

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"(these include immediate things that affect the body, but also the evolution of societies, etc.)"

This is really much of the appeal of Christianity, and other forms of culture that have survived some test of time. I say this in response to pg's foot note:

"Unless we mass produce social customs. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christianity in the US is partly a reaction to drugs."

Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity.

I am also struck by how successful families and subcultures often have strong mechanisms in place to stigmatize these addictive impulses. Modelling self control and discipline has a lot to do with how success and prosperity is transferred across generations. By itself, accumulated cash will dissipate very quickly if the necessary character traits are not transferred along with it.

Modern evangelical Christianity is very much a mass-market phenomenon. It doesn't exist without Glenn Beck and his ilk, who are very much artifacts of the Internet echo chamber (though they perhaps owe more to Fox News, cable news being a bit of a prototype for the Internet's monotonous assault on reason.)

It's very fashionable in the hacker community to treat Christianity as an anti-science establishment, but that's really a brash generalization that isn't even supported by facts. You'll even find a lot of evangelical Christians who are stauch proponents of the theory of evolution.

It's a rather tired meme that Evangelicals are engaging in an all-out assault on the scientific establishment, when that simply isn't true. There is a large, vocal evangelical contingent that espouses creationism, but 'evangelicals' are a much more complex and noisy bunch than one might expect.

To put it simply: I've been to quite a few churches that were direct examples of the overload culture that PG is writing about. Some of them were evangelical, most of them had congregations whose political beliefs are in no way uniform. And again, evangelical is in no way a synonym for right-wing. PG is overreaching here. But, it was a footnote, so I've already gone on more than is justified.

I really wish I didn't down-vote this. I got derailed by what I thought was going to be a short-sighted rant about Christians and Glenn Beck. In short, however, I think you're right on the money.

Many Christians I know refer to modern evangelical Christianity as "evangelicalism." It connotes a social construction that has its roots in church life, but its purpose is a far cry from a biblical understanding of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. IMO, this accounts for the rise of Beck, Limbaugh, and other talking heads. They preach a message that isn't watered down. They sound impassioned and convictional, unlike the guy standing in front of them on Sunday morning.

Possibly related: Apparently, India is somewhat perplexed by a resurgence of spirituality among the highly educated. No real effect in rural areas, but the heavy earners are becoming uncharacteristically religious.

> Not just drugs, but all the different things pg cites as addictive. Plugging in to older value systems is one way of putting a brake on those impulses. This, of course, is true of many other religious and cultural systems that have stood the test of time, not just Christianity.

I hope I was not the only one who instantly thought of Neal Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_ and its phyles (especially the Victorians).

I thought exactly of that, too!

Just didn't get around to working it into my comment. :)

I remember reading that, wondering who is today's equivalent of the Victorians. (The Victorians, of course, were the historical equivalent of the Victorians.)

> I remember reading that, wondering who is today's equivalent of the Victorians.

Inside the US? I'd go with the Amish first, inasmuch as they pretty much are from the Victorian era. (Technically they were much earlier, but I figure they've drifted that far forward.)

Outside of small or weird groups, I would guess the Asian-Americans (Japan/China/South Korea, to be exact) are the closest in their high valuation of education, thrift, repressed social mores, and reputation.

The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further.

Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements. One reason wheat was adopted so widely so early is that it didn't need to change much to be domesticated (see Guns Germs and Steel). Strawberries on the other hand, weren't domesticated until medieval times, and the same is true of many nuts, most notably almonds. Cattle has also undergone a far larger genetic transformation than many of our primary grain crops. Most damning to the idea of a paleo diet is that we have, too.

Human evolution has clearly accelerated with population growth. According to some anthropologists, modern humans differ more from those 5,000 years ago than those humans differed from Neanderthal.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN1043228620071210

In short, the paleo diet rests on flawed assumptions about evolution, the history of agriculture and ignores the main body of nutritional research and is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations.

Edit: It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan doesn't have anywhere near the ecological footprint of a bicycle-riding "paleo" dieter.

> The Paleolithic diet is one of the dumbest ideas I've encountered in my entire life. Its followers tend to discount vast piles of medical research in favor of tiny experiments that suggest what they hope to be true. This kind of behavior is common for adherents of any fringe diet, but paleo goes a step further

While there is indeed a paleo re-enactment fringe that tries to live as they understand our ancient ancestors would, not just nutrition-wise, I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.

> Even its concept is flawed. Some things it discards, such as wheat are barely changed from what our ancestors were eating long before agriculture or town settlements

Oh? Wheat requires several months from cultivation to being ready for consumption. Perhaps it was consumed "long before agriculture or town settlements" but then it seems quite implausible that it would amount to anything significant in terms of nutrition, not to mention that it still requires quite a bit of processing before it can be eaten so it isn't exactly readily available nutrients.

But lets for a moment assume that yes, there have been many changes and genetic transformations to fruits, nuts, the meats we consume and ourselves. How is it unreasonable, given the catastrophic results of following current nutritional dogma, to look into our over 2 Million- year evolutionary history for clues on what we may be doing wrong, and noting that we've had agriculture for only 0.5% of that time. Even if after agriculture our rate of change multiplied 10-fold, we would still have a nutritional heritage of over 95% of our history where we most likely did not consume, in general, 60-80% of our nutrients from grains and certainly not from sugar, or refined vegetable oils.

That sounds like a pretty good clue to me.

> is rightfully considered a fad diet by the NHS and similar organizations

And then people all over are giving these ideas a go, and lo! they're feeling better, losing their excess weight, reversing chronic diseases, feeling energetic, not having hunger ups-and-downs, not feeling bloated, etc. (granted, this is all anecdotal evidence) And yet this is one of the dumbest ideas you've encountered in your entire life? You must be pretty lucky having a life of plentiful great ideas.

> It's also horribly unsustainable. A hummer-driving vegan...

There was the shadow of a reasonable argument there. It is entirely possible that given our current population of over 6 billion people, not all of us could follow the exact same diet, then again, there's no reason why anyone would suggest that. A good 1/5th of earth's population does not eat cattle for cultural reasons, cattle is not the only meat, and it can be raised sustainably (while being more nutritious), and there are other good sources of the necessary nutrients from the paleo perpective, and the needs of a male vary from those of a female, from a baby, from a child, from youth to middle age to old age, from summer to winter, from health to injury to fertility vs infertility, from athletes to sages, etc. There's plenty of wiggle room for me to believe that it is indeed sustainable.

Sorry for the long post.

I find that there's actually a good bit of research-based and evidence-based thinking going over these "vast piles of medical research" you mention and finding that they don't really support the current accepted dogma of nutritional recommendations, and that indeed this research is pretty flimsy itself, if you were to believe Taubes, Lustig, Cordain, Eades, others, and tellingly now there is an alarming increase in obesity, diabetes and other chronic diseases as an apparently direct result of the public by-and-large complying with common-wisdom "healthy" recommendations.

I'm not sure what you're talking about when you say "current nutritional dogma". What I was talking about was the fact that the longest lived people in the world eat rice as a primary nutritional staple, or a combination of rice and wheat. All of the countries with the worst obesity and life-style disease epidemics are countries which consume far more protein than necessary and a great deal of meat in general. Not only that, but the proportion is linear-- the US and Mexico consume the most animal products and have the worst rates of lifestyle diseases, with Canada and the UK slightly behind that, and so on all the way to the leanest and least "paleo" countries in eastern Asia.

Even in the healthiest of countries, i.e. Japan, S. Korea, etc, those people who have adopted higher-protein western style diets are the same people starting to manifest some of the same lifestyle diseases westerners have had for decades. Those eating more traditional, mostly plant-based diets are not.

As someone who has lived in Asia for the most of my life it sickens me to see fat people who eat too much meat grasp and Atkins, paleo and other fad diets that involve eating even more of what made them sick in the first place. I know a lot of people who eat rice or noodles every single meal and not a single one are as fat as the average person I see when I go back to visit the US.

The avoidance of highly processed food is sound, but the overall diet is anything but.

I'm no paleo advocate, but your statistics are totally wrong.

Denmark is the world leader in per-capita meat consumption, followed by New Zealand and Luxembourg. The USA is number 4. Canada is in the top 10, but the UK and Mexico are not. Mexico isn't even in the top 30.

Likewise, consider two of the main diet-influenced lifestyle diseases: heart disease and diabetes. Countries in Eastern Europe are all ahead of the US in heart disease incidence and deaths per capita, as are Germany, Norway, Ireland, the UK, New Zealand, Sweden and Australia. There is a higher incidence of diabetes per capita in Germany, Argentina, South Korea, Spain, Mexico and Puerto Rico vs. the US.

If you don't adjust per-capita, the countries with the most heart disease and diabetes are China, India and Russia.

Looking at meat along (as opposed to animal products), Mexico doesn't make it to the top, but it is still far above Asian levels (even China). The US is cited as being at the top in many places, though it's possible Denmark is ignored due to having a smaller population than some US cities.

United States Leads World Meat Stampede http://www.worldwatch.org/node/1626

It's also worth pointing out that S. Koreans have a longer life expectancy than people in either the US or Denmark, despite being less economically developed and have a much smaller social system. Note that the countries topping the life expectancy rankings, Japan and HK are both big rice eaters, and that #3, Iceland gets most its meat as fish.

That said, after reading your post and once again researching the statistics, I'm absolutely shocked how quickly rich countries other than the US have been increasing their meat consumption. I couldn't find lists that looked at total consumption of animal products, but the rankings in terms of meat itself have changed a lot. I'm still 100% sure that eating rice at breakfast, lunch and dinner is part of the traditional Japanese diet, and that they out-live the heavy meat/cheese/butter eaters in other rich countries.

Re: wheat being the same as it ever was:

http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/2010/05/in-search-of-wheat...

> What we call wheat today is quite different from the wheat of Biblical times. Emmer and einkorn wheat were the original grains harvested from wild growths, then cultivated. Triticum aestivum, the natural hybrid of emmer and goatgrass, also entered the picture, gradually replacing emmer and einkorn.

> The 25,000+ wheat strains now populating the farmlands of the world are considerably different from the bread wheat of Egyptians, different in gluten content, different in gluten structure, different in dozens of other non-gluten proteins, different in carbohydrate content. Modern wheat has been hybridized, introgressed, and back-bred to increase yield, make a shorter stalk in order to hold up to greater seed yield, along with many other characteristics. Much of the genetic work to create modern wheat strains are well-intended to feed the world, as well as to provide patent-protected seeds for agribusiness.

He goes on to try einkorn bread, and doesn't get the same reactions and BG rise that he does with regular bread. Search for 'einkorn' on that blog if you're curious.

I can't read blogspot from here in China, and I'm not generally interested in bloggers when it comes to highly controversial issues such as nutrition.

but I do realize wheat has changed in some ways, primarily in that it sprouts every season now. Try subjecting popular "paleo" foods to the same scrutiny you just subjected wheat to-- most currently popular fruits weren't eaten at all until the past few hundred years, walnut trees had to be grafted in order to be cultivated and most almonds killed people who ate them! Similarly, big game on each continent was hunted to extinction, especially in Australia and the Americas. Domesticated animals have been bred to be far different than anything our ancestors encountered.

Wheat has changed little by comparison.

I'd like to respond and not leave your assertions unchallenged, but I think your post is a bit too charged and absolutistic to engage with..pretty clear there is little room for debate.

I'll just say that since switching to a diet that contains whole foods consisting of meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, I've never felt better or been in better shape. I've seen the same results in many friends. If I have a big meal of grains I'll feel sick and almost hungover as a result.

Your mileage may vary, but have you tried it and seen what happens to your body? I've experimented with many types of diets, including strict veganism for about 3 months. So far a "paleo" diet has worked the best, for me.

I've never really tried to "diet", but I have experimented for sports. 15 years ago, when I was a competitive runner. At my healthiest point, I was eating about 70% of my calories from carbohydrates, had a resting pulse of 48 and could run a 10k in under 35 minutes. I did try experimenting with more meat and fewer complex carbohydrates. The result was, my performance suffered greatly and my sweat started to stink. I've also tried being entirely vegan, which also lead to worse results. Once I went back to eating mostly grains, vegetables and fruit with a modest amount of animal products, I started feeling and doing better. Every single good runner, swimmer or cyclist I've known has eaten a relatively similar diet. The only exception I can think of is some of the most extreme ultra guys, who seem to need the absolute most calorie dense junk food they can find.

Since then I've become more sedentary, but have still maintained lower cholesterol and blood pressure than the majority of people in their 20's. I started eating richer foods several years ago in Taiwan and put on some weight, but found it disappears quickly after returning to a more normal (Chinese) rice and vegetable based diet.

Have you considered the possibility that the paleo diet may be one of those rare things that is horribly flawed in theory but works just fine in practice?

You're correct that there's no good nutritional reason to only eat "paleo" foods (though certainly, almost all the foods that you should definitely avoid, like chocolate, chips and cheesecake, are non-paleo). You're also correct that a modern "paleo" diet doesn't have all that much in common with a hunter-gatherer's diet anyway.

But as a useful heuristic for coming up with a healthy diet for weight loss in the modern world, it's not too bad. If you're trying to lose weight only three things really matter:

a) Are you maintaining a calorie deficit?

b) Are you getting enough nutrients?

c) Is the diet easy to stick to, or does it make you hungry/give you cravings?

The paleo diet seems to work fairly well by all of these metrics. It's really just a standard low-GI diet with a few other things unnecessarily banned (beans, dairy). The restrictive nature of the diet means you eat a diet rich in meats and vegetables, which are nutrient rich and fill you up with relatively few calories. The low-GI nature of the diet stabilizes your blood sugar and stops you getting the hunger pangs you'd get on a more carb-rich calorie-restictive diet. And it seems to be relatively easy to stick to with only a moderate amount of willpower -- I've been on it for nearly three weeks now and the idea of eating a brownie just gives me a headache.

I don't think I'd recommend it to anyone trying to maintain weight, since I think it would be difficult and expensive to consume enough calories for a healthy lifestyle without eating modest amounts of grains. And the prohibition on beans and dairy is probably unnecessary. But as a workable heuristic for weight loss, "eat paleo foods" isn't half bad.

It's strange to me that you use Guns, Germs, and Steel as an example of the virtues of wheat, when Jared Diamond called agriculture "the worst mistake in the history of the human race." (The article itself supports the basic idea that hunter-gathers were individually healthier than farmers: http://www.environnement.ens.fr/perso/claessen/agriculture/m...)

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