regarding #2, diet fads come and go every decade or so. imho the jury is still out.
Of course, even if they had not, it does not mean that the paleo diet is somehow automatically better: the only conclusion that can be made is that it is an adequate diet to sustain a person.
Regarding cattail flour, there are several things to note. One, it was coarsely ground which is in direct contrast to the majority of flours that we currently consume. Whole grains are in general better than overly processed grains if you're going to eat grains. That being said, the evidence for our ancestors eating cattail flour comes in around 30,000 years ago. The Paleolithic period goes back 2.5 million years and the evolutionary history of our digestive habits is largely without any grains. Just because we have been eating grains for 30,000 years does not mean that's what we ate throughout the majority of our evolutionary history.
I'm not a nutritionist but I do eat a predominantly lacto paleo diet and the changes in my body fat, sleep habits and energy levels have been extraordinary. Anecdotal? Yup but it can't hurt to give it a try. That's usually my advice on the paleo diet. Far from being a fad diet, it's much more like a lifestyle change that seems to make sense in my experience.
This is true. Even granting the paleo premise, though, eating something through evolutionary history does not in any way imply it is the most optimal food for humans. Only that it is a sustainable diet. It irritates me that people (many of the fad-chasers at any rate) seem to think that way. Then again, it also irritates me that people generally think evolution is an optimising process.
> I'm not a nutritionist but I do eat a predominantly lacto paleo diet and the changes in my body fat, sleep habits and energy levels have been extraordinary.
Did you make any other lifestyle changes along with it?
I did not make any other lifestyle changes, at least not on a conscious level. My exercise, stress, job and the usual suspects are all still the same. My body fat is down 2% without any increase in exercise. My sleep cycles have increased (at least according to my Sleeptracker watch) by about 50-60% on average. My energy levels are completely subjective but it "feels" like I have more energy. I haven't done blood work yet to see what my cholesterol and thyroid levels are but should have that done in the next few weeks.
Again, my suggestion to people is to try paleo for 30 days then go back to your typical diet and see how you feel. If you feel fine, you lose 30 days. If you feel terrible, you discover something.
I'm sure you're very well aware of that, but just noting that cholesterol levels itself is not a good predictor of anything. It is more important to look at the levels of high and low density lipoproteins (or "good" and "bad" cholesterol).
In fact, it might be a bit late for a blood test if you haven't done one before starting a diet, because you wouldn't know what was the change in cholesterol levels that the diet induced. For example, if HDL went up a lot, and the LDL went down a little, I would consider it a good thing, even though the total cholesterol might go up.
It was pretty amazing since my metabolism has definitely been less efficient than when I was younger. (I'm 36)
The key thing for me was probably not eating processed food, as I had trouble eating only few potato chips or crackers.
It took a couple months for the cravings to go away, but now the thought of eating that kind of food is kind of disgusting. Now 70% of my shopping is at my weekly farmers market.
Disclaimer: I'm 99% macrobiotic. Every couple months, when I happen to be around it, I'll have a piece of bacon and eat it really slowly, savoring every bite.
edit: The idea that "America == Bad" and also " !(America) == Good" is a fallacy that seems to get up-voted way too often here (and celebrated in way too many other places).
As a european who went to university in Rochester and has lived for quite some times in different countries Asia and Europe. I can say that I've never seen any countries where food habits was as bad as in Rochester... Of course, there were some good restaurants in Rochester, there were farmer markets but all of the restaurants at the university served greasy unhealthy food (I couldn't stand the food there and actually lost 10 pounds in 6 month because after 3 weeks I got tired of all the food served there and just didn't feel like eating much).
Now, Rochester might be extreme, it is after all the home of the "Garbage Plate" but really it was shocking and while all of this is anecdotal, the statistics do show that US has a very high number of obese...
And this is not due to starvation - there are plenty of developed nations where people have access to all the food they desire, yet do not suffer the same health problems we do.
The poster's point is valid - there are obviously many nations out there that are developed and wealthy, where food is not in shortage, where paleolithic diets aren't widely practiced, where cheeseburgers aren't the standard food, yet they do not have many of the same problems that are prevalent in the US. This seems to suggest that paleo is far from the only way to maintain your health.
This is what I hope to do when I am ready to do a marathon.
I recently started to dismiss comments that include statements like "all carbs you need, all protein you need" etc. as not only useless, but actually harmful.
The source of carbs, fats, proteins is way more important than the fact that a certain amount of nutrients is present in a certain food.
If all a human needed was a certain amount of nutrients, it would be possible to be perfectly healthy on a diet of table sugar for carbs, industrially extracted vegetable oils for fats, some amino acid pills for proteins and a multivitamin complex. I think we can all agree that this would not work well.