Hacker News Reader

Comment by TomGullen | Hacker News Reader

It's not an idea, it actually happened. People actually ate paleo style for millions of years from necessity.

It's a fad because you draw your "evolutionary diet" line at the Paleolithic for no reason at all. For 100 million years prior all your ancestors ate a pure vegetarian diet. Why isn't that diet more sensible from an "evolutionary" perspective?

I don't know much about the history of nutrition. However, I will assume that prior to Paleolithic time we did eat a pure vegetarian diet.

So what? Vegetation diet 100 million years ago I'll guess that obesity is nill comparatively to today.

I'll also guess that there was comparatively virtually no obesity in the Paleolithic period.

Nowadays we live in a period where we're told pasta is healthy, or orange juice is healthy (a lot of brands have more sugar in the juice than coca cola). We all eat lots of bred, refined carbs. Sugar has never been so readily available. Parents buy their children sweets all the time.

And guess what? We're turning into a developed world of obese people and higher levels of heart disease.

So yes, a modern vegetarian diet probably is healthier and safer than sandwiches, crisps and orange juice.

Paleo diets are not fads. Our bodies are tuned to metabolise those sorts of foods. People relentlessly defend carbohydrates when they are the most likely candidate for the epic levels of obesity and other related diseases.

The question is why do you choose the Paleolithic era as your cut off? We evolved the ability to consume dairy and grains about 10,000 years ago. If you are basing diet on what we evolved to eat, why do you exclude foods that we evolved to eat?

Evolutionarily speaking, 10k years is a drop in the bucket. The paleo diet postulates that while we can eat daily and grains, we haven't evolved to do so b/c 10,000 years is too small a period in which to do so.

This is incorrect, and there are many examples to prove it. For example, alleles conferring lactose tolerance increased to high frequencies in Europe just a few thousand years after animal husbandry was invented. Similarly, recent increases in the number of copies of the gene for salivary amylase, which digests starch, are related to agriculture.

Basically, the response to the change of the environment of a species depends on three factors:

1. Heritability 2. Intensity of the selection 3. Number of generations that selection acts.

What this means is that 10,000 can be more than sufficient to fully evolve the ability to eat and digest dairy and grains.

Whilst I'm sure that is true, it certainly won't be true for the entire human population.

I strongly suspect that my excellent reaction to low carb diets is because I haven't evolved the ability to consume them as well as other humans. Clues include oral allergy to birch pollen and my 'output' when I eat dairy and grains is less than optimal.

I don't believe low carb works for everyone. It doesn't work for my wife. But it is a useful tool, that I'm very glad I found.

My post refers to the paleo diet, which is not a low carb diet. Their principles are completely different.

To be fair, it's something that we think happened based on the limited amount of awareness available to us thousands of years after the fact.

I just mean it can be true that the paleo diet existed before, and that it is a current dietary fad.

That doesn't mean it isn't a fad. And to be accurate, no it didn't actually happened. The cows you are eating did not exist. Neither did any of the fruits or vegetables. Almost everything you eat is much more modern than the grains you eat. Humans have been consuming grains for at least 100,000 years. There is no evidence to support the notion that grains are bad for us in any way.

Wheat is thought to be only be around 10,000 years old or so. If they were eating grains 100,000 years ago, it certainly wasn't what we are used to eating today.

Additionally, beer is considered by many to be the first significantly consumed product of grain. I don't think you could say modern day beer is completely free of any health side-effects. It gets the blame for quite a number of ailments.

>Wheat is thought to be only be around 10,000 years old or so.

Which is older than all of the vegetables that exist today, and older than cattle or chicken. "This food has evolved over time" is not support for a claim that the food is unhealthy or dangerous.

>It gets the blame for quite a number of ailments.

No, it doesn't? Alcohol does, but that's neither unique to beer nor does it have anything to do with grain.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com