The Paleo Diet Myth

The Paleo (or Caveman) Diet - is it myth or miracle?  One thing we can say for sure is that, although it is one of new kids on the block, the Paleo Diet has definitely taken the health and fitness world by storm. Big web names such as Dr. Mercola, Tim Ferriss and Anthony Colpo have climbed on board, along with a horde of crossfit and strength enthusiasts who gravitate towards the idea of high protein for muscle and lower carbs for abs.

The concept behind this diet is, needless to say, "eating Paleolithic", which for believers means eating as a "hunter-gatherer".  So a Paleo Man eats nothing except what - you guessed it - can be hunted and gathered. Meat, berries, nuts, vegetables, fruit - these are all that are allowed in a true paleo diet. 

In practice, most paleo diets are simply low carb diets with an emphasis on the above foods.  Usually fruit is shunned, except in small quantities, and very often "lean meats" are emphasized.  Coconut and/or olive oil is sometimes allowed as well just to mix things up a little.

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Grains and potatoes are considered the root of all evil and any of the popular Paleo books will have abundant discussion centered around this concept. The idea is that as man implemented grains much later in his evolution, the ensuing glycemic load has led to our current epidemic of diabetes, insulin resistance and chronic disease.

Sounds logical, right?  Well, the Paleo hunter-gatherer mystique is nothing but that:  mystique and mythology.  And here's why:  Paleo advocates claim that their diet simply follows man's evolutionary pathway where it naturally leads.  In fact, though, nothing could be further from the truth. Think of the irony:  a Caveman Diet ignores the fact that we are not really Cavemen.

That may not make sense at first but allow me to explain. The danger of the whole paleolithic concept is this:  the paleolithic era is only a blip on the evolutionary pathway of mankind, a small bump in  the road on our journey.

Consider this:  a 2001 study showed that our genetics are about 98% similar to that of a chimpanzee. [1][2][3] Granted, follow up work has shown some genetic sequences to have a somewhat lower percentage, but it really doesn't matter:  the point is still the same. [4][5] The lion's share of our development occurred BEFORE the "monkey stage."  And monkeys have been around for 20-60 million years. 

What this means is that only a very small percentage, around 2-5%, of our genetics comes from the last 20-60 million years.  And an even smaller percentage comes from the time that we walked out of the jungles a few hundred thousand years ago. Chimps are almost entirely vegetarian and thus it is strictly a myth that our caveman past shows our natural evolutionary dietary patterns. 

This is why study after study shows the power of grains. Yes, it's true that grains were not really used by man or monkey until just a few thousand years ago as Paleo writers love to point out.  But grains are incredibly healthful because they are a natural plant just like virtually all of the food that we have consumed through tens of millions of years of evolutionary history.  Grains work because virtually our entire system is built around plant-based eating.  Read my link on Grains and Erectile Strength for just a few examples of what whole grains can do for you.

And think about this:  we are only hunter-gatherers because of our intelligence.  That's right - we would still be eating almost entirely plants except that our intelligence grew to the point where we could literally walk out of the jungles and survive anywhere on planet earth.  We HAD to eat as a hunter-gatherers, because that was our only choice as we colonized and tamed deserts, mountains and plains. But this was not our natural way of eating, because we had not had time for evolutionary adaptation to paleolithic living.  Do Paleo advocates really think that a few 100,000 years is going to lead to major evolutionary change?

That's why you'll see in my book that all of the erection-promoting foods that boost nitric oxide are plants.  That's not because of any social agenda or bias on my part:  it's simply because only plant foods will do that for you.  And why are plants so good for our endothelial and cardiovascular systems?  Again, it is because we're much, much closer physiologically to a chimp than we are to the mythical hunter-gathering missing link. 

NEWS FLASH: A recent study brought to light that Mitochondrial Eve lived only around 160,000 years ago. Mitochondrial Eve is basically the last common ancestor of all mankind based on mitochondrial mutations.  And here is the fact that is so damaging to standard Paleo theory:  scientists now believe the migration out of Africa occurred less than 95,000 years ago. [6] The fact is that we simply weren't hunting and gathering caribou and venison until very, very late in our evolutionary history.  This is a blip in our genetic map.

I love the taste of meat as much as the next guy, but the fact is this:  our bodies were built primarly to eat plants.  If you eat a boatload of meat, you are swimming upstream against your own physiology (unless, perhaps, you can find low fat sources and can avoid HCA's).  Will a little meat kill you?  Of course not.  In fact, most of the supersupercultures eat a little. However, you do need to walk with "eyes wide open."  Read my links on The Dangers of the Atkins Diet and Saturated Fat to see why you can get yourself into trouble quickly with Paleo, Low Carb and other similar diets. 

REFERENCES:

1)  Am J Hum Genet, 2001 February, 68(2): 444–456, "Genomic Divergences between Humans and Other Hominoids and the Effective Population Size of the Common Ancestor of Humans and Chimpanzees"

2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics

3) Nature, 2005 Sep 1, 437(7055):69-87, "Initial sequence of the chimpanzee genome and comparison with the human genome"

4) Genes Dev, 2007 Nov 15, 21(22):2963–2975, "Global analysis of alternative splicing differences between humans and chimpanzees"

5) PNAS, Jun 24 2003, 100(13):7708-7713, "Comparative sequencing of human and chimpanzee MHC class I regions unveils insertions/deletions as the major path to genomic divergence"

6) http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/14367/20130322/mitochondrial-eve-common-ancestor-humans-migration-africa.htm