I've vaguely described what a paleo diet is. What I haven't gone over are the arguments for adopting it.

First, the facts. Humans have only had agriculture for the last ten or twelve thousand years. Before that all humans were hunter gatherers and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. We hunted (actually, early humans hunted all the large mammals on earth into extinction), gathered vegetables and fruits and grasses and nuts and eggs that grew wild. No cultivated grains - what we know as wheat didn't exist until early farmers cultivated crops for a long while and bred grasses that provided more food.

None of this so far is controversial. A few morons out there think our paleolithic ancestors were vegetarian, but there's just no way to support a human body by foraging on vegetables alone. Primates that don't eat meat have to eat all day long. They have bigger stomachs, smaller brains, and can digest a lot of plants that we can't digest. The only way to support a large, calorie hungry brain is by eating meat.

By the way, lots of groups of people maintained this hunter gatherer lifestyle until very recently, and a few groups still do it in very isolated areas.

Now, what happened when these people started growing crops instead of hunting for their food? Well, they got sicker. Their kids were shorter, had crooked teeth, and developed all kinds of debilitating diseases that had never occurred before. We can tell this by looking at and comparing the remains of early agricultural people to their hunter gatherer ancestors. Those easy to grow grains have too many carbohydrates, too many anti-nutrients (substances that bind to and leach nutrients out of your body), too little protein, and too few other nutrients to support healthy humans.

So why did they stick to it? It's all about population density. Once you have enough people in a given area, say a valley, it's a lot easier to feed them all reliably with agriculture than through foraging. And if your neighbors are foraging and you're growing food, you can support more kids, even if their teeth are crooked and they get arthritis when they age. More kids means more fighters, and pretty soon your neighbors are growing their own crops to keep you from killing the males and stealing their women. Agriculture gives an advantage to your group, and pretty soon every group of humans who weren't isolated had to start doing it. They also domesticated animals, which helps you get your farm work done, and so we got civilization.

The crux of the problem is that we were well adapted to being hunter gatherers. What does that mean? It means all humans had a complement of genes that made them healthy on a hunter gatherer diet. Over a couple of million years any humans who couldn't, for example, tolerate meat well, would have either died before passing on their genes or just had problems breeding (they would have been less healthy, and have attracted fewer mating opportunities). Remember, these people lived in a harsh, violent environment. Nobody was going to put perennially sick members of their tribe (members who couldn't tolerate their diet) into hospitals or nurse them for decades and certainly nobody was going to bear their children. Over hundreds of thousands of years of not being passed on, non-meat-friendly genes would have disappeared from the gene pool.

Back to the farmers. Once humans started farming and raising animals, a new set of genes was going to be advantageous. For example, suppose some kid is born with a mutation that allows him to digest lactose as an adult. If that kid is born into a hunter gatherer society, there's no particular benefit for that kid - nobody has access to milk, so that kid wouldn't come across as a good catch or anything. Now suppose that same kid is born into a group of farmers that has some cows around. The kids drink milk, but the adults can't handle it. Except for the mutant, who keeps on drinking milk, because he can (remember, he's got the gene that lets him). No big deal until, maybe one year the crops fail. All the other males are starving, but this one guy is healthy and strong from drinking milk. Who do you think is going to get laid more often (excuse my vulgar way of putting it)? After a few generations you have a population that can tolerate milk better than their ancestors.

In fact, you can see this - lactose intolerance is prevalent among groups that didn't domesticate cows, while those that domesticated cows early (relatively speaking) have much less lactose intolerance. It takes time, though, for these changes to occur - many thousands of years - because you have to wait for the right mutation to occur, then spread, etc.

Suppose some alternate world where humans lived on grains and dairy for a million years. I'd guess that we'd be well adapted to, and live healthily on, those grains. Someone somewhere would have gotten a mutant gene that lets them expel or neutralize phytic acid, and they would have had stronger, straighter teeth, and in ten thousand years all humans would have that gene. Someone somewhere would have gotten the set of mutations that allows their immune system to handle milk proteins and passed it on.

But it hasn't been a million years. I'ts been ten thousand, and while we've partially adapted to the agricultural diet, we haven't fully adapted. How do I know? There's lot of evidence that grain and dairy cause all kind of health problems that we don't get from meat, fruits and vegetables, and seeds and nuts.

Does that mean anything modern is bad to eat? I'm going to say not necessarily. Take tea, for example, Did paleolithic humans drink tea? I don't think so (I could be wrong, though.) Does that in itself make tea bad? Well, it might be that tea has nothing in it that is particularly bad for you, despite the fact that we didn't evolve to be tea drinkers.

The facts about our evolution, though, should give us an idea of what to look out for - of what we should be suspicious. If our paleolithic ancestors ate it, then we're adapted to it. If they didn't then we should be SUSPICIOUS - we should look at the research and see if it's okay or not.

I'm guessing that grains and dairy act as sort of low level allergens for a lot of people. I don't get an asthma attack from eating a bagel, but eating bagels might make the asthma attacks I do get, triggered by other allergens, more severe. I'm hoping that taking grains and dairy out of my diet for a few weeks or months will give me more energy by relieving some of my allergy symptoms.

What makes me think that this might work? Two things. First, it makes evolutionary sense that I wouldn't be well adapted to the proteins in grain and dairy. Second, there's lots of anecdotal evidence that people who take grains and dairy out of their diet feel better - more alert, less tired, etc. Anecdotal evidence is NOT PROOF. I'm not sure about this. I have just enough evidence to think it might be true and try the diet out.

I'll let you know if it works.

Osu.

I mentioned the paleo diet yesterday without going into any details about it. If you're familiar with the diet, skip this post (and probably the next two or three!) If not, here's a brief introduction.

With any diet plan you have to consider two different things - what is it, and why should one follow it. Once you've decided to follow a plan there are other things you'd be interested in, like recipes and tips for cooking and eating out and so forth, but that's for later. I'd rather not try to address both questions in one post, so I'm going to start with an overview of what paleo eating is, and save the justification (why some people think it is a good eating plan) for another post.

There is not any one paleo diet. When I say paleo I mean a diet similar in substance to the diets proposed in the books "The Paleo Diet" and "Neanderthin," various websites like the Caveman Forum and Catalyst Athletics, Art De Vany's site, and a few other places. These diets all recommend that we eat more like our paleolithic ancestors - and I don't mean their table manners, I mean eat the foods that were available to our stone age ancestors and only those foods.

If you're not an anthropologist you might wonder what those foods are. Basically, we're talking about avoiding any food that was developed after the advent of agriculture. Stick to what hunter gatherers ate. Lots of meat, fresh vegetables, some nuts, some eggs, fruit. Eat more of the meat - organ meats, the heart, etc. What can't you eat? Grain (any grain), potatoes, legumes (beans), and dairy (you can't milk a wild animal). So no bread, pasta, peanuts (they're legumes), etc. No cheese, milk, butter. No artificial stuff - no nitrates, preservatives, no vitamins, no modern crap.

Why? I'll explain that another day.

Not all paleo diets are identical. I think all of them advise staying away from grains and beans. Some add nightshades to the prohibited list (tomatoes, peppers). Some allow dairy, some not. Some advocate eating all or most of these foods raw. Some allow limited quantities of alcohol (wine, beer) but some don't.

A few big issues are as follows. Different adherents have different beliefs about saturated fat. So some advocate cooking in canola oil, some in coconut oil (the latter is mostly saturated fat, which I think is fine, but many disagree). As I mentioned, a big issue is whether dairy is allowed and how much. Clearly dairy is not paleolithic, but for some dieters that's okay. Coffee and tea are other questionable substances - not paleolithic, but may be okay, may not, depending on your slant.

Meat is good (in fact, necessary). Some advocate trimming the fat, others advocate eating all of the good stuff (our stone age ancestors definitely ate the fattiest parts of the meat). One issue with beef fat is that our paleolithic ancestors ate animals that were grazing in the wild. The animals they hunted weren't cooped up and fed grain all their lives. When animals eat grain the kinds of fats they store in their flesh are different than when they eat grass. Grass fed animals have much higher levels of Omega 3 fatty acids and other healthy fats. Going to town on regular store bought meat may or may not be healthy but it isn't really what our paleolithic ancestors did. On the other hand, eating grass fed beef (which can be bought online and ISN'T the same as organic beef) is very similar to what our ancestors ate.

Different advocates stress fruit to different extents - everyone allows it, some advocate limited it. Dried fruit (fruit you dry yourself, without adding preservatives and sugar) is good, as is jerky, but storebought dried fruit and jerky might have stuff in it you don't want to eat.

Summary: meat, lots of veggies, some fruit and nuts. Maybe dairy, maybe limited alcohol, maybe limited artifical stuff like sweeteners.

What will I be doing? I can't be superstrict. I'll still be eating small amounts of cheese (I can't do veggies without some salads, and I just can't do that without some parmesan, but no more milk and whey shakes). I have twenty pounds of grass fed beef on its way to me as we speak courtesy of Fed Ex. I'm going to drastically cut back on or eliminate diet soda. I'll drink green tea, though, and some beer. Most of these exceptions are for willpower, not philosophical reasons - it's not that I think the green tea is important, it's just that I can't give up soda AND tea all at once and have any chance. I'm pretty sure I'll break down and eat pizza or something once a week or so, but maybe I'll cheat less.

Will it work? Stay tuned.

Osu.

One of the most surprising things about intermittent fasting, in my experience, is its ability to help people gain muscle. This runs so contrary to the "you must eat 6-8 times a day" mythology of contemporary bodybuilding that it keeps catching me by surprise.

Anyway, over the past seven months or so I thought my weight was reasonably stable because i was using the old "abs in the mirorr test." I don't have ripped abs by any stretch, but they weren't getting worse, so I figured my weight was okay. Big mistake. I actually weighed myself just before Christmas (it's a holiday celebrated by Christians around the end of the year commemorating the birth of their messiah) and lo and behold I had gained 10 or 15 pounds since the beginning of summer. Oops.

The good news is that I must have put on some muscle in that time, based on how my clothes fit. The bad news is that I didn't gain only muscle, and that's just bad. Fat slows you down, and I'm already terminally slow.

I know how to lose weight - stay on my diet. When I'm fairly strict with it the pounds do come off. The problem is I tend to cheat too much. What to do?

For whatever reason I decided to try to change my diet (once again). I'm getting older, and I tend to be tired a lot of the time, and I don't sleep very well. Why not? How should I know? It's certainly nothing my doctor can figure out. So maybe if I clean up my diet some more I'll feel more energetic.

Solution: I'm going Paleo. I've been intrigued for a while, and I've decided to take the plunge. I had my last wheat, hopefully for a good long while, this morning, oh, except for playoff football pizze (American football, Italian pizza).

This does not mean I'm reneging on IF. I'll just do IF with paleo foods - that is, eat for a 4-5 hour window only each day, but eat only foods that are allowed on a Paleo diet.

What's Paleo, you ask?

Next post, I promise.

Osu.