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>> "I for one would love proof that the diet is wrong about cereals and legumes."

>> "I read reports and testimonies of people getting better on it and athletes performing on it."

I think this is the wrong way round. When people make claims that stuff we've been eating for thousands of years (bread, cereals, grains etc.) are actually really bad for us, the burden of proof is on them.

If anyone could actually prove that wheat causes weight gain and health problems (independent of other variables), they'd be a good candidate for the next Nobel in Medicine.

Most studies I've read show that Paleo is no better or worse than a normal healthy diet. In some cases e.g. when you're an athlete, it'll be actively worse, since carbs are a basic source of fuel. [1]

On top of this, Paleo promotes some claims that are ridiculous, e.g. that burning fat for fuel == burning carbs for fuel. They have totally different consequences.

Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food. Loads of calories and not enough exercise means your body stores fat. That's sort of obvious, and nothing to do with any special properties that 'carbs' have.

Just eat plenty of vegetables (esp green / strongly coloured ones), and make sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure calories in < calories out. That's the general pictures studies give us.

Be extremely sceptical of anything claiming otherwise. I'm not sure why intelligent people can get so caught up in fads - such as Paleo - that are backed up by pseudo-science. My theory is that they appeal to the contrarian in us - after all, they're delightfully counter-intuitive in some ways (eating lots of steak can be good for me?!).

You've got to have contrarian ideas to be really intelligent, but not all contrarianism is good.

[1] I say this as a semi-pro runner who has tried running on a Paleo diet and found it disastrous. You cannot burn fat with the same efficiency as you can 'burn' carbs (i.e. use glycogen). It doesn't work that way. And if you still think it does, look up the diets of the top 10 athletes in basically any sport & explain to me why none of them are on Paleo.

>> You're getting all this the wrong way round. When people make claims that stuff we've been eating for thousands of years (bread, cereals, grains etc.) are actually really bad for us, the burden of proof is on them.

I'm not sure if this should also apply with stuff that we put inside our body. In any case, not all of us are willing to wait that long, while we obviously see problems with the status quo. I choose to rather just make a judgement call based on social cues.

>> On top of that Paleo promotes some claims that are clearly ridiculous, e.g. that burning fat for fuel == burning carbs for fuel. They have totally different consequences.

This is inconsistent with anything I've read on this diet, but would be closer to the Low Carb High Fat diet, which I agree would be detrimental to an intense training regiment. May I suggest that you and I were not introduced to the same paleo diet? I recommend that you look up Robb Wolf.

>> Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food. Or lots of anything. Just eat lots of green stuff, and make sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure calories in < calories out.

Oddly, this is very consistent with what is promoted in the diet.

>> It mystifies me how otherwise-intelligent people can get so caught up in fads such as Paleo, backed up by flimsy pseudo-science.

Attempting to belittle people who choose to try the diet doesn't make you smarter and certainly doesn't prove nor validate your arguments.

>> My theory is that they appeal to the contrarian in us - after all, they're delightfully counter-intuitive in some ways (eating lots of steak can be good for me?!).

That is indeed only a theory. On the other hand, maybe some of us actually do see some results.

>> And if you still think it does, look up the diets of the top 10 athletes in basically any sport & explain to me why none of them are on Paleo.

The diet is extremely prevalent in the crossfit circles (it's even increasingly overshadowing the official diet, which is The Zone diet) and mixed martial arts (many of my training mates switch to it prior to competition). During my own research I stumbled upon this interview http://youtu.be/r-WRn8UttXw?t=10m (interview starts 10 minutes in the video, somewhere within the first 2 minutes after it begins Joe Rogan mentions having talked to many fighters who are on it).

My take away: "otherwise-intelligent people" use the diet as a set of guidelines for improved health and quality of life. You can choose to take it as a religion, but then lots of things just get more difficult. If you practice a sport, you need to adapt the diet to the demands of your discipline. I recommend to look up experts who are more sport oriented (I mentioned Robb Wolf earlier).

But what he is trying to say is you don't need any fancy rules except for:

>> Yes, eating lots of carbs is bad for you. So is eating lots of fatty food. Or lots of anything. Just eat lots of green stuff, and make sure you get adequate amounts of protein & carbs. To lose weight, make sure calories in < calories out."

By agreeing with him, you have to come to the conclusion that following the above advice is what makes any diet good. There is nothing "unholy" about grains. I believe that was the point nqureshi was trying to make.

I can agree with him on that specific point, but beyond that there's the issue of people he calls pseudo-scientists (who are actual scientists that do actual academic research on the topic), that are linking degenerative diseases and grain consumption. http://thepaleodiet.com/published-research-about-the-paleo-d.... That and the accompanying evidence on actual people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLjgBLwH3Wc.

Good enough for dad good enough for me but is there any research to support it? There is no shortage of research supporting low carb whole grain and fresh fruit over highly processed foods. There are also numerous well documented incidents of people moving from native foods to processed grain and other food suffered negative health effects. Personally I dont think whole grain foods are all that bad in reasonable amounts.

I got lazy as there it doesn't take much work finding research supporting increased fresh fruits vegetables and lean meat. http://www.ars.usda.gov/news/docs.htm?docid=9234 http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=23004 http://www.ars.usda.gov/News/docs.htm?docid=22791

Paleo is not a "low carb" diet. The point of Paleo is not to reduce the number of carbohydrates you ingest; nor is it to enter ketosis; nor is the primary goal of Paleo to lose weight. You have been reading the wrong things, and I can't even imagine what lead you to believe that you could run at any serious level without ingesting carbs.

The pop-fad elements of the diet that have been parroted by journalists are generally the "elevator pitch" version of the diet, not the real 'meat' (pun so intended).

The main tenets of the diet are to avoid processed and/or high-sugar food, grains, (non-fermented) legumes, bad fats/oils (especially those from seeds), and dairy, and to seek out whole foods, fish and lean meats (especially from ruminants and organs) and good sources of fat (with good omega 3/6 ratio). Some folks can handle dairy just fine and do so. Some can eat white rice or white potatos and suffer no ill effects. Those are not outright banned by the diet. Carbohydrates can come in many forms that are accessible on the diet.

You were lied to, and I'm sorry that you tried to run without eating carbs, I image that would be unpleasant. But please discontinue spreading misinformation about Paleo, as it has vast benefits when applied correctly and in line with your body's needs.

> "The point of Paleo is not to reduce the number of carbohydrates you ingest; nor is it to enter ketosis"

Having been curious enough to browse paleo forums (including /r/paleo most recently), this is how most adherents seem to define it.

They may be wrong, but in that case it seems the majority of the paleo community is wrong.

> "But please discontinue spreading misinformation about Paleo"

It would be nice, then, if the paleo community can first come to an agreement about what it is, because even disregarding literature "from the outside", reduction in carbs and entering ketosis is a huge focus of conversations I've seen on these communities.

I agree with you that the community at large is full of individuals looking for quick-weight-loss diet magic and that ketosis can be a fringe benefit of Paleo if you intentionally limit your carbs. But the community is not the diet, and the _majority_ of the community are, as with most diets, people following a fad insomuch as it doesn't actually interfere with their current habits. /r/paleo was a good source for a hot month or two a few years ago, but nowadays it should be called /r/bacon and its content taken with a grain of salt.

Mark's daily apple or Robb Wolf's site are probably more representative.

Paleo is a low-carb diet. By consequence rather than design, and it's certainly not an Atkins/ketosis diet, but the emphasis is on fish, meat and eggs. If you need to consume a standard ratio of carbs:protein:fat on the paleo diet you're going to have an oddball variation of what most people do on paleo and be eating lots and lots of squash, yams, and sweet potatoes.

Some folks can handle dairy just fine and do so. Some can eat white rice or white potatos and suffer no ill effects. Those are not outright banned by the diet.

Of course they aren't "outright banned" but potatoes and rice are exceptions to the guidelines.

By consequence, Paleo is low carb if, while following the diet, you don't eat a lot of carbs. What you call an "oddball variation" is what some others might call "what works for them".

"Paleo is a low-carb diet."

What are you eating and calling it "paleo"? Practically every meal I have ends with citrus / berries / apples / bananas / etc. Sometimes for breakfast we'll have some sliced up apples, that's 30 or so grams of carbs right there. Sometimes an afternoon snack is just a banana or a handful of grapes.

At a typical Atkins level of 20 grams carb per day, I'd be screwed by the time I'm done eating two apples for breakfast, and I've still got the rest of the day to go.

I don't think I'm unusual in that I paleo it around maybe 4 parts veg, 4 part fruit, 1 part meat, and maybe 1 part nuts and "other (possibly non-paleo) stuff" on a very long term average. I don't think its physically possible to low carb if you eat about four times as much fruit as meat. Its not so much that I eat huge amounts of fruit, its that I don't eat so much meat. I ate a 24 oz steak once and literally felt sick, don't know if it was the massive fat content or some kind of protein overdose or just too much in the belly. Lots more filet mignon than t-bone, that kind of thing. I tend toward larger fraction of fruit for breakfast (aka two pieces of fruit per breakfast), larger fraction of veg for lunch (aka salad bar almost every day) and larger fraction of meat for dinner and a chunk of fruit before bedtime. Individual days vary, this is just average.

Diets that include grains typically expect people will get over half of their calories from carbohydrates. Atkins is the extreme opposite and is virtually a "no carb" diet as the purpose is to deplete glycogen stores and induce ketosis.

"4 parts fruit vs 1 part meat and 1 part nuts" doesn't say much because fruits can have varying amounts of carbohydrates and meats and nuts can have varying amounts of calorie-dense fat. Also how big is a "part"? Grapes and bananas are relatively high in sugar but most fruits aren't carbohydrate-dense and even then, bananas are a genetically modified domestic cultivar and definitely a product of agriculture. Same with apples.

I'm not sure you realize how aggressive you would have to be to get 1000+ calories per day from fruit and vegetable carbohydrates alone. Almost certainly, the vast majority of people on the paleo diet do not eat 4 bananas and 4 apples, a pound of carrots and 2 pounds of spinach every single day. They eat eggs. They eat almonds. They eat fatty meat. They pour olive oil on their salad. They wind up with notably less than than the 200-250-ish grams of carbohydrates that is typical of other diets.

  > Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because
  > the diet is from the paleolithic?

With the recent eco-natural-organic-whatever fad I wouldn't be surprised that some do. Line of thinking would go roughly like this: long time ago->before current technologisation->natural->good.

  > What convinced me was its simplicity and results.

Did you try anything else before without results? It is likely that just starting to care what and how much do you eat will provide results, no matter the name of the diet.

> Does Miller really believe that people who eat paleo do so because the diet is from the paleolithic?

People who are on the paleo diet tell me exactly that.

Anyway, they seem healthier than before they started, so taking an interest in healthier food consumption seems to work for them. As you say, the outcome is the important thing.

The Paleo diet may well have made the hunter-gatherers very healthy. However, as I have already passed their life-expectancy, there seems to be no data supporting whether it will work for my longevity ;)

> I have already passed their life-expectancy

The reason life expectancies were 35 back then was due to horrible infant and early childhood mortalities. People lived on the close order of 100 years (70-80 or so) back long before we had anything like medicine. For example:

> A saeculum is a length of time roughly equal to the potential lifetime of a person or the equivalent of the complete renewal of a human population. [snip] At the time of the reign of emperor Augustus, the Romans decided that a saeculum was 110 years.

In other words, if you wanted to make sure everyone who had been alive for some specific event was dead, you had to wait a hundred or so years. Does that sound like the reasoning of people who expected to die before they hit fifty?

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

You must have missed my emoticon.

Horrible infant mortality, and also horribly dangerous lifestyle (chasing after wild game).

First, the age of the Roman republic was a long way from the stone age. Second, by then grain was a HUGE part of the diet, so drawing conclusions about life expectancy from Roman traditions is probably not a great example. Third, Romans didn't live that long - here are a list of emperors I could find who died of natural causes...

Augustus - 75

Tiberius - 77

Vespasian - 69

Titus - 41

Nerva - 67

Trajan - 63

Hadrian - 62

Antoninus - 74

Marcus Aurelius - 58

I'll stop there - the next century is a drag.

I'm not sure why he brought up the Romans. But I think he wanted to illustrate how unintuitive life expectancy is.

According to Wikipedia, which cites brittanica (does anyone have a real source on this?), roman life expectancy was 28!

But if you survived to age 15, your life spam was expected to be much longer.

In this context the HG life expectancy of 33 is better than it sounds.

long life spam? I already get that in my inbox ;)

As far as I know, almost any diet that's not obviously insane or unhealthy gives satisfactory results if followed diligently.

It's not about the specific content, it's not about any pseudo-scientific justifications for the content, it's simply about how easy it is to stay on the diet without lapsing or indulging in any extraneous treats.

> I do see an improvement in my sleep quality and in the past week have noticed a spike in my swimming endurance.

Did that coincide with another change? Is your diet the only thing you changed? Did that reflect the results you were expecting?

The diet represents a significant change in my eating habits. I would have to look really hard to find a different cause.

I significantly reduced bread, rice, potatoes, pasta, legumes in the last 2 weeks. That's extremely unusual for me. In the same time, I probably ate more veggies than I would in 6 months. Broccoli, cauliflower, celery, lettuce, cucumbers, asparagus, kale, swiss chards, butternut and spaghetti squash and a bunch of other stuff. Some tubes for variety (yams and sweet potatoes). My fruit basket is always full and varied (avocados, papaya, bananas, grapes, apples, pears, oranges, tangerines, etc). I eat eggs, meats (including bacon) and seafood exactly like before. I eat nuts like before. I still drink green tea daily. So far my only previous snacking habit that seems to be "legal" in the new context is plantain chips, I'm not sure if it's really allowed, but I don't care, I'm not changing it.

My philosophy regarding diet is to encourage good habits, not discourage bad ones. In other words, fill myself with as much good stuff as not having to crave the bad. My brother bought pizza on friday, I ate it and drank some coke. Yesterday he brought home a sandwich for me, I ate it the same. I won't feel guilty about that.

I did have various cravings in my first week, but I simply increased my meal portions the second week and I've been fine for the most part. I stay extended periods without even thinking of chewing on a candy bar.

Regarding physical activity, I noticed that I recover better from training and swimming sessions and I also have more endurance.

I haven't bought into the grass-fed and organic mindset so far. I'll see where the current regiment carries me in term of performance and well being, before attempting to go "all natural" and see if it really makes a difference.

I'm not going to take a side, but just to answer a part of your comment on "species that just disappeared" as, apparently, an argument for saying humans might not have adapted to their new diet.

Obviously, humans have not disappeared - quite the contrary in fact - therefore they either have adapted to their new diet, or were already suited for it.