[kgoings]

Originally Posted by Cyanide

Well, I had never formally heard of "the hunter-gatherer diet" AKA "paleolithic diet" until you mentioned it here.

And, I can't say that 15 minutes later I am an expert on the topic.

But, it seems to push a high meat content, followed by wild grains, foraged plant materials etc. The big push regarding this diet is the proposed lack of signs/symptoms of cardiovascular disease, with some bandwagoning in "diabetes, ... cancer, auto-immune diseases, obesity".

From what I see so far there isn't any smoking gun. Unfortunately, some of the websites I have perused do seem to take on a fervor that makes me concerned for what lays beyond.

The claims regarding ridding yourself of these disease really does not have much foundation on which to stand. I would doubt that the studies could really control for enough variables to determine what the causation was. Hunter-gathering leads traditionally to expending lots of energy to obtain the food and probably not gathering an abundance of food. Its the agriculture evolution that probably was one of the first steps to allowing humans to start advancing in population and technology, as food became easy. I think the evidence is really pooling in that a calorie restricted diet may be one of the most effective ways to live as long as possible, at least in animal models. But that leads to emaciation, lethargy and generally a "not fun" life. Your metabolism probably slows down so much that you live longer, wishing you were having fun. Animals don't mind much as they are really just worried about surviving one second to the next. So, lack of food availability probably takes care of obesity, diabetes and by extension cardiovascular disease. I was not able to find any relavent sources, but I do imagine the life expectancy was pretty low in hunter-gatherer eras. Trauma, starvation, infection probably killed most humans then. Only once food was easy to get did we live long enough to die from cancers. Auto-immune diseases? I think that is a red herring. While they are interesting and shocking, they are relatively rare. Including them would only be for the shock value and probably a complete fiction.

I don't think that grains and carbs are the route of dietary evil. I do think that they are cheap and easy to produce and thus are highly utilized in food products. Combine that with overeating and you are almost guaranteed to be eating too many carbs. But that will probably be true for fats as well, not so much protein. For some reason protein doesn't factor high into a poor (which commonly coincides with cheap) diet.

I like to stay active, otherwise I would seriously consider the calorie-restriction thing (isn't the Bernstein diet like this?). But, then, a week in, I would probably hunt down a kid in my neighbourhood and eat them. So, reasonable diet is for me.

If one wanted to be a full thinker in designing a diet, they would first start with what their calorie requirement is. I think mine is about 2400 a day just to live (I am a big guy) then add my exercise expenditures (probably 1200-1500 a day, 10km+ a day). If I wanted to loose weight I would come in under that sum. Otherwise, aim for that sum.

Then decide what the required protein is. I believe the researched requirement per day is approx 0.76 gram/kg body weight for grams of protein a day. Alot of people round that up to 1gram/kg. This is the type of numbers when the dieticians calculate out diets for hospital patients with dietary components to their treatments. It is based on various rigorous studies that I trust (but don't have references to anymore). Then subtract out the calories from that protein (4 cal/gram protein approx). Then calculate the fat. I think its 30% calories from fat, no more than 30% of your fat being saturateds. Fat is 9cal/gram. Then the rest can be carbs. Include at least 30gram fibre into your carbs every day.

Include an exercise program that involves 40 minutes cardio/aerobic (pace that leaves you breathless if you try to converse while doing it) 3 times a week. With that, you are probably sitting on about as healthy a diet as need be.

All the micro-nutrients (vitamins/minerals) will probably be easily satisfied with any balanced food sources you choose (BALANCED, no excluding groups) and you won't have to worry about deficiencies (despite the absolute non-truths spread onto the public) except maybe vitamin D if you don't get enough sun, folate for fertile females, iron for females with heavy cycles.

No nutritional therapies will "boost the immunity" (unless you are actually correcting a true vitamin deficiency). You cannot boost the immunity. The only thing that "boosts the immunity" is inflammation and infection....and that's more a case of stimulating the immune system you already had. You may develop immunity from a particular pathogen that attacked you, but you will not have a "stronger/more potent" immune system. The only diseases that can realistically be treated with dietary therapies are those that involve dietary abnormalities (obesity, diabetes, cholesterol). Cancer will laugh at your dietary changes. If anything, better nutrition will strengthen a cancer, by strengthening you maybe, and thus freeing up more resources the cancer can use up. That being said, don't kill a cancer by killing the host.

I have kind of gone all over the place with this post, and in turn, only touched very briefly on many topics. Hopefully I have hit some of the important ones at a useful level of detail.

Cheers

John

My interest in the palio diet is more from just living healthier, not so much trying to get rid of disease like you mention.
I am reading a book “The Palio Diet” and in the introduction it talks a little bit about some points you talked about. In the small amount of studies that have been done on indigenous populations, aka hunter-gathers they all seem lean, muscular, and fit. Some of that can be attributed to having to fight for their food, but some has to be accounted for in diet don’t you think? In all of the few studies they found almost no heart disease and High Blood Pressure was unheard of. Two of the studies mentioned were of the Yanomamo Indians of northern Brazil and southern Venezuela, and the Greenland Eskimos.
It talks about commercially grown meat being much fattier than the meat of the animals hunted down by the hunter-gatherer. About the hundreds of percentage increase in the amount of grain that we consume since the Agricultural Revolution. And how maybe, our bodies were not designed to process that much grain and carbohydrates.

I am not sold yet, but it does ‘make sense’ when you start thinking about it and how the body works. I heard a trainer talking about the diet to someone else about it and decided to take a look. Since I have found several of my co-workers who have been living this lifestyle for several years. None of them are super workout freaks (or even work out at all) and they all are very fit and trim. One of my co-workers said that since he switched his diet, his high-blood pressure and high cholesterol are gone, 4 years now he has been on the diet and he had cholesterol in the high 200’s before. He says he Palio’s during the week and then will kind of carb load on the weekend, or at least one day a week.

It all seems very interesting.