My friend recently emailed me to let
me know she was coming to town this weekend to visit family and go out for a
nice dinner with them. She asked if I could suggest good area restaurants,
since she's now doing the Paleo Diet. I started googling. Yes, I've
heard of the Paleo Diet, knew the basic tenets, but wasn't exactly sure of what
was included/excluded. Through my search, I came across a video called
"The Perfect Human Diet". What a load of crap! I am so
tired of diets based on half-truths and fuzzy science! Sorry if anyone
else I know is following this diet, but I just have to tell how I feel. I hope I don’t step on any toes.
So I watch the video. I get the main premise:
prehistoric man was able to grow a huge brain and make cognitive advances
only after he started eating meat. The evil in our present day diet is
because we've gotten away from that caveman diet of meat, nuts, berries, and
greens. And I follow the logic. All of our modern diseases come
from the fact that we now eat cultivars--grains and legumes included--and dairy,
and foods processed and over-processed from these cultivars. OK. Then the
"documentary" moves to an interview with a doctor, who walks around
the grocery store telling us what we should and shouldn't eat. Fruits and
vegetables, OK. Meat, OK. (Only a brief reference, however, to
how/where the animal was raised and what it was fed; no reference at all to the
advantages of eating local and/or organic--BOO!). Bread, no. Pasta, no.
Dairy, no. Legumes (including peanuts), no. Rice, no.
The much-maligned potato? No, of course not. Even GREEN BEANS
are out. WTF?! I daresay that prehistoric man ate whatever crossed
his path. He probably dug up sweet potatoes and potatoes and other roots,
if they were available. He probably found some wheat-like grain and
chewed on it until the gluten made it like chewing gum (something my husband
used to do with wheat at the farm). Unlike our ancestors, we are going to the
grocery store to find food, instead of foraging for it. And all the
fruits and veggies that the doctor said were supposedly OK on the diet?
Cultivars. That's right. BECAUSE THAT'S THE ONLY THING
AVAILABLE TO US, unless we go out in the woods and forage for plants and
berries, of course. I'm thinking about these fabulous tiny wild
blueberries we saw in the woods on a walk in Belgium this summer; but how many
of those would we have to find to make a meal? Just to get a handful was a lot of work.
Grrr.
That having been said, I know I feel
better when I eat fewer/less grain-based foods in general, and have an easier
time losing weight when I avoid them. But that's because they are the
most efficient way to get calories in! Duh! That must be why my
growing 10-year-old craves them! And
of course diets that avoid grains and other simple carbohydrates will make you
lose weight, because it becomes too difficult to make up the difference in
meat--it takes too long to chew and process, and does make you feel fuller.
And so, de facto, if you follow this diet you will most likely eat more
fruits and vegetables, thereby improving your cholesterol numbers, blood
pressure, etc. But why make up crap to make people believe that we're
somehow able to eat like Paleolithic man? And how do we really know what
Paleo man ate? (Oils are OK on the diet, which I'm not sure Paleo man had
figured out how to make, by the way; I’m also not sure how many vineyards were
around in Paleo times, but red wine is determined to be OK, while beer is
out. Hmmm.) Not to mention that exercise--the
one factor that is undisputedly different from cavemen to present-day
man--probably allowed them to eat whatever the hell they wanted. If they had
been foraging for Cinnabons, they were still foraging, and the activity alone
would have probably negated any effect from simple carbohydrates and the
ensuing insulin resistance.
Not to mention, if our diet now is solely
causing our obesity and autoimmune epidemics, how do some people continue to
stay thin and healthy? Wouldn't everyone be susceptible to the effects?
What about those centenarian populations in the Mediterranean or Okinawa,
who are eating rice, grains and/or potatoes and/or legumes like crazy?
How about those people in the south of France who eat the most saturated
fat and meat (often with legumes, think cassoulet),
and still live longer than the rest of France? And why has the epidemic waited
to swell until the end of the 20th and beginning of the 21st century?
Couldn't it have something to do with the invention of cars and
drive-thrus and the domination of Monsanto instead?
Sorry, this video made me totally hot
around the collar, as you can tell. The whole thing just made me sick
and tired of the "newest, best thing." We know fruits and
veggies are good for you. We know the government food pyramid (now the “plate”)
was devised by politicians, and is most likely not a good guide for nutrition.
We know that sweets should be avoided, or at least just saved for a
special occasion. But the human body is a marvelously adaptive organism,
and tells us (pretty loudly) when it's not getting the right thing or enough of
the right thing or too much of a good thing. We just need to listen. Clearly, that’s where the problem
lies. We’re not good listeners.
I’ll freely admit, I have always been
searching for the best diet for my own situation. I still don't know why I have this autoimmune disease that
makes my body attack its own connective tissue. But I’ve found through my
searching that there is no magic bullet,
no amulet I can wear, no single nutrition advice--beyond the common sense
advice--that will solve it. Maybe it was something I was exposed to
in childhood, some chemical or drug. Maybe it's genetic. Maybe it's
dietary, but because of some fertilizer or insecticide or genetic modification
that I don't know about and have no control over. Maybe--and probably--I
will never know in my lifetime. Why do I eat the same or less as people
who weigh so much less than I do? I may never know that either. After sifting through thousands of
pieces of nutritional, diet, and lifestyle information, I have come to one
conclusion: I only have to use
my intuition and listen to myself. This is of course both disappointing
and liberating. For myself, I do
know that: 1) I have to watch portion control, especially around special
occasions; 2) I have to watch alcohol consumption, those sneaky, empty calories;
3) I have to get enough sleep, or as much as I can; 4) I have to exercise,
probably every day, probably an hour each time; 5) I have to eat lots of
veggies and fruit and other foods that I know are good for me. That's it. That's all. A
full time job, of course, but frighteningly simple.
