Paleo diet

[barbourdurham]

I only eat paleo. In simple terms, don't eat processed foods. Stock to the centre aisles of the super market.

Palaeolithic man was an opportunistic eater. If it was available, they would eat it. If donuts grew on trees, they would of eaten them. Paleo for me is easy. Just learn how to cook. You could argue that Palaeolithic man didn't cook much of his food and ate it raw. But with the advent of fire, you can be sure that he would of experimented with roasting, even as a basic cooking method.

As with all things concerning diet, if you like the idea of a paleo diet, then try it. If you just can't stay away from processed foods, then paleo ain't for you.

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[Corso]

its a nice idea but the way I see it I've already lived longer than 90% of the paleo gen on the diet I'm on.....

 

[Nice65]

its a nice idea but the way I see it I've already lived longer than 90% of the paleo gen on the diet I'm on.....

Not necessarily. The assumption that Paleo people only lived into their 30's is unproven. It's a general and sweeping statement proliferated by internet. Grumpy Opinel and Mora fans mainly Lee.

http://paleodiet.com/life-expectancy.htm

 

[Janne]

I'd be really interested in the Independent European research you mentioned, if you can remember anything about it.

In a previous life I was a geneticist for 10 years in the 2000s and never came across any convincing scientific evidence of long term GM diet having detrimental health effects.
There was a widely reported paper that showed rats ONLY fed GM soya had higher mortality/health problems but I seem to remember there was very little control (that is if the rats were fed ONLY on regular soya they would have faced the same nutritional deficit) and was subsequently widely discredited (however that wasn't so widely reported).
It has been a few years since I've actively looked at the research.

Selective breeding where beneficial traits are selected for by breeding with and between particular strains has been done for millennia and is the basis for all farming. However it is not without problems, unfortunately there have been strains produced in this way (in the last 50 years) that have had a detrimental impact on human health (I was taught a number of examples but can only remember a particular potato that was toxic even when cooked), however there are very few checks on breeds produced in the 'traditional' way.

Most GM crops are GM because they have had particular pesticide resistance genes inserted allowing farmers to use far more pesticide, far more indiscriminately for my liking. They also sometimes have their viability messed with forcing farmers to buy new seed every year (rather than being able to grow from the seed they produce). totally immoral in my eyes.
As with a lot of science GM was developed with the best of intentions to be able to improve drought resistance, yield and pest resistance. However when the multinationals came in all they saw was a way to make money by forcing farmers to buy the pesticide resistant strains and then the pesiticides themselves (farmers pay twice) and don't give a toss about the effects of the pesticides on the surrounding environment...

No scientist goes into science with the sole aim of making money, though every businessman does, sadly.

I will try to find it. It was a tv programme that mentioned it, could it be one of the documentaries on Netflix?

I find it very strange that through GM they inserted a pesticide producing gene into a food seed. When sprayed on the surface it can be rinced or milled off, so we ingest only a small amount. If inside, we ingest all of it.

 

[Janne]

A quick search gave the name Seralini. That is one of the aeuropean researchers I think.

Many countries in Europe have banned or severely restricted the use of GMO.

 

[Janne]

I do not eat processed food, or should say I avoid it as much as I can.
But I do not call it Paleo Diet, I call it Oldfashioned cuisine...
We cook every day, from scratch.
Of course, when we eat out we do not have the same control, but we try to eat in restaurants and eateries that still have a full kitchen.

I only eat paleo. In simple terms, don't eat processed foods. Stock to the centre aisles of the super market.

Palaeolithic man was an opportunistic eater. If it was available, they would eat it. If donuts grew on trees, they would of eaten them. Paleo for me is easy. Just learn how to cook. You could argue that Palaeolithic man didn't cook much of his food and ate it raw. But with the advent of fire, you can be sure that he would of experimented with roasting, even as a basic cooking method.

As with all things concerning diet, if you like the idea of a paleo diet, then try it. If you just can't stay away from processed foods, then paleo ain't for you.

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[Robson Valley]

The conclusions regarding paleo life spans are supported by simple skeletal evidence. It varied with region.
All across North America, life spans among indigenous peoples were recorded in photographs and in fur trading company records.

The chances of mass starvation increased (I say increased) after communities began to depend less and less on available variety
and more and more on a small variety of crops. More problematic inland.
OTOH, it is not possible to starve to death on the west coast of British Columbia. European Small Pox was the substitute,
exterminating entire villages. Long ago, I lived on Nipew (Lake of the Dead.)

If "Paleo" means the difference between DIY foods and Convenience Foods, I've eaten Paleo for decades.
I am roasting a farm chicken over heat with apple wood smoke. We will cook some vegetables from the garden.
Maybe prepare some wild grain such as wild rice (not really rice but that's the idea).

 

[Janne]

I think that is the problem.
These fad diets claim to be better that the "standard diet" we are supposed to eat.
But the assumption is that the "standard diet" is the fast food diet eaten by many in N. America and UK.
In many countries people still eat the "old fashioned diet". Be it Scandinavian, Mediterrain, Middle Eastern or whatever.
These diets are poor in processed ingredients.

I do not think the Fast Food eaters that want to change their diet to a healthier one need to go to extremes like the Paleo diet, but just start cooking.

We are incredibly lucky that we have access to fresh veg and fruit year round. Imported fresh from all around the world.
my dad, born in late 1920's, told me what his mum had to cook with during wintertime. The closest to fresh veg and fruit were shrunken carrots and other root veg, shrunken apples. Stored shrunken potatoes. Self canned fruits like plums and cherries
Sauerkraut. The rest was dried. Dried peas, beans. Dried apples, cherries and pears.
Jams.

Paleo diet in Europe? Meat. Wild parnips, carrots, grass seeds. Mollusks from rivers, lakes and sea side. Bird eggs in spring. The off fish.
Acorns, beech nuts galore. Honey if you were very lucky. Wild crabapples.
I would love to see anybody living of that!


The European nature during Paleolithic times could only support a very limited number of people.

 

[Robson Valley]

"old-fashioned diets are poor in processed ingredients." That's as it should be!

Some ecologists have attempted to combine nutritional value with caloric requirements.
They argue that each individual hunter/gatherer needs some 15km^2 for foraging.
Seems to me that simple transplantation and propagation has to have great value.

 

[dewi]

I'm just surprised by the definitions in this thread that I feed my family on a paleo diet!

We have meat and 2 veg for the majority of our evening meals, occasionally spicing things up (literally) with an Indian, Chinese or Mexican meal... but everything is prepared from fresh meat and veg. Tried making bread, and it did not go well

A few months ago we signed up for a meal plan where we received a box of fresh meats, veg and spices... some recipes included... and it was brilliant. We had such a variety of healthy food, all fresh ingredients. I won't name the company because unfortunately for 4 weeks on the trot we received rotten vegetables and on one occasion rotten meat... so we stopped and went back to buying from either the supermarket or the local market. Unfortunately due to lack of custom, my local butcher decided to retire and close up shop completely. He (and his wife) provided top quality meat at good prices that competed well with the supermarkets, but it would seem people don't want to shop for their meat separately any more.

 

[Janne]

What I mean is that even if you cook the old fashioned way, some processed ingredients are used. Like white sugar (or any sugar) instead if honey, flour that is ground in modern steel mills, bleached and treated and so on.
Yes, you can avoid it, but if my mom and granddads cooked like that, I do the same. Trying to buy organic dry goods though.
Imported organic fruit and veg is not only ridiculousle expensive, but in horrible condition.

 

[Janne]

I'm just surprised by the definitions in this thread that I feed my family on a paleo diet!

We have meat and 2 veg for the majority of our evening meals, occasionally spicing things up (literally) with an Indian, Chinese or Mexican meal... but everything is prepared from fresh meat and veg. Tried making bread, and it did not go well

A few months ago we signed up for a meal plan where we received a box of fresh meats, veg and spices... some recipes included... and it was brilliant. We had such a variety of healthy food, all fresh ingredients. I won't name the company because unfortunately for 4 weeks on the trot we received rotten vegetables and on one occasion rotten meat... so we stopped and went back to buying from either the supermarket or the local market. Unfortunately due to lack of custom, my local butcher decided to retire and close up shop completely. He (and his wife) provided top quality meat at good prices that competed well with the supermarkets, but it would seem people don't want to shop for their meat separately any more.

Depends in which Paleo Diet, the Fad Paleo, N.American Paleo, S. American Paleo, EuroPaleo.....

Paleo diets, all of them, were incredibly poor in variation.
If you search on the net about suggestions of Paleo Diet, you will see that it is using foods from most corners of the Earth.

There is a reason people started domesticating crops and animals.

 

[dewi]

We tend to stick to locally sourced meats and locally sourced root vegetables. Have tried to grow our own, but the only thing we were successful with was peas. And they're far too delicious raw for them ever to see the pot!

Whether it's paleo or not is probably open to much debate, but we steer away from processed food. It's cheaper to eat processed and quicker to cook, but we like our food as a family... not so much quantity for the rest of the family, more quality. I, of course, get what has become known as the 'Daddy portion' (not my idea btw) but my wife and I take our turns on making meals from fresh ingredients.

I'll admit, we have Taco nights which has some processed foods, and we do have a fortnightly pizza night. And the kids don't share my love for the great English breakfast... but diet wise, I think we're close as a family to a basic fresh food diet.

Lets just hope with everything going on in the UK at the moment that the Welsh keep churning out their lamb. Without it, we'd starve twice a week!!

 

[Janne]

If the Welsh stop the Lamb business, I am sure Sweden will fill the gap. Lamb from Gotland and Öland is very tasty too, being brought up on the herb rich diet the lands produce there!

Personally I do not see myself as following a diet. I like cooking, so it is quite natural for me to cook simple dishes from scratch, and these tend to be the food my mom was tought by the previous generations.

 

[Robson Valley]

Janne, given the processing technology, plain white sugar (sucrose) is likely the purest, cleanest chemical that you can buy in the store.
Even good table salt has more impurities.

"Paleo" is horse-puckey. Totally. Smoke & mirrors.
The real deal is to prepare your meals from the original raw resources.
That is not at all difficult to do.

I can buy farm chickens, lambs, sides of bison. I hunt grouse, ducks & geese (and a turkey).
I grow some root veg, I barter meat with neighbors for more.

However, I will say that for people in cities of 100k or more people, this is a terribly difficult
life-style to manage. In my little village, everything is less than 10 minutes from anything else.
The Paleo Diet Bull-tweet comes from big-mouth city people
who popularize on the failure of ordinary folks to take advantage of what their ancestors did for granted not many decades ago.

 

[Countryman]

I'd be really interested in the Independent European research you mentioned, if you can remember anything about it.

In a previous life I was a geneticist for 10 years in the 2000s and never came across any convincing scientific evidence of long term GM diet having detrimental health effects.
There was a widely reported paper that showed rats ONLY fed GM soya had higher mortality/health problems but I seem to remember there was very little control (that is if the rats were fed ONLY on regular soya they would have faced the same nutritional deficit) and was subsequently widely discredited (however that wasn't so widely reported).
It has been a few years since I've actively looked at the research.

Selective breeding where beneficial traits are selected for by breeding with and between particular strains has been done for millennia and is the basis for all farming. However it is not without problems, unfortunately there have been strains produced in this way (in the last 50 years) that have had a detrimental impact on human health (I was taught a number of examples but can only remember a particular potato that was toxic even when cooked), however there are very few checks on breeds produced in the 'traditional' way.

Most GM crops are GM because they have had particular pesticide resistance genes inserted allowing farmers to use far more pesticide, far more indiscriminately for my liking. They also sometimes have their viability messed with forcing farmers to buy new seed every year (rather than being able to grow from the seed they produce). totally immoral in my eyes.
As with a lot of science GM was developed with the best of intentions to be able to improve drought resistance, yield and pest resistance. However when the multinationals came in all they saw was a way to make money by forcing farmers to buy the pesticide resistant strains and then the pesiticides themselves (farmers pay twice) and don't give a toss about the effects of the pesticides on the surrounding environment...

No scientist goes into science with the sole aim of making money, though every businessman does, sadly.

Neonicotinoids
Glyphosate

Yeah let's plough on with GM, that'll be alright.

Not in my country please.


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[Corso]

Not necessarily. The assumption that Paleo people only lived into their 30's is unproven. It's a general and sweeping statement proliferated by internet. Grumpy Opinel and Mora fans mainly Lee.

http://paleodiet.com/life-expectancy.htm

Hmmmm I prefer my science to apear in peer reviewed journals. The bias and asumption leaps from that page the references are just further opinion, find the primary data and I'll look at this again more seriously.....

 

[KenThis]

I will try to find it. It was a tv programme that mentioned it, could it be one of the documentaries on Netflix?

I find it very strange that through GM they inserted a pesticide producing gene into a food seed. When sprayed on the surface it can be rinced or milled off, so we ingest only a small amount. If inside, we ingest all of it.

Unfortunately documentaries can often be very biased and one sided, they can be produced very professionally which make them look like news/factual content, but can be sponsored by particular lobby groups to only show a particular view. Even if reputable sources are used, quoted or interviewed skilful editing can quickly give the wrong impression. Sadly it happens a lot.

Sorry I should have been clearer regarding pesticide resistance maybe herbicide resistance would have been more accurate. The genes they often splice in allow the plant to survive even if sprayed with pesticides/herbicides used to kill weed plants or insect pests, basically the plants become immune to poisons. previously farmers would try to get rid of weeds/pests once (maybe twice) a season because if they used pesticides/herbicides the rest of the time the crop quality would also be affected. this meant that the local environment could still support a lot of plants and wildlife during the growing season. with the immunity to poisons farmers can spray herbicides and pesticides as often as they like so very little apart from the crop plant survives. this is great for yields and harvesting but terrible for local environment often affecting species that rely on the weeds and pest insects on agricultural land. Also when I say farmers I'm not having a go at all of them. The original idea to introduce these resistance genes was so that farmers would actually be able to use less herbicide and pesticide. the rationale being that being able to spray directly on the crop species at specific times would mean a more targeted approach so less environmental impact. real world economics ended up beating that idea though.

I hope this is clearer, although I have a pretty good grasp on the subject I am by no means an expert but could probably dig up some materials if you're really interested.
Also I have no vested interest in GM, yes I understand the technology and the potential risks better than most, but I was an evolutionary geneticist looking at speciation.
My biggest concern with GM is not with eating the crops (personally having looked at the evidence I'm pretty sure that's safe), it is to do with monoculture and the loss of biodiversity in the long term. It is very clear that being reliant on a single strain/breed is a terrible idea if a pest species starts to affect it. Think potato famine or current banana production problems.

Anyhow I've hijacked the thread enough.

 

[boatman]

An acquaintance of mine had one true paleo meal a year. Using his canoe he would steal at least one duck egg to make an omelette. One met all sorts at the Beale Park Boating and Outdoor Show.

 

[KenThis]

Neonicotinoids
Glyphosate

Yeah let's plough on with GM, that'll be alright.

Not in my country please.

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I'm really not an advocate for the current use of GM crops, but not because of direct risks to human health from ingestion.
I don't believe GM crops are intrinsically dangerous to eat. I was just pointing out with the amount of testing of GM food compared to more traditional cross breeding GM food becomes in fact safer to eat.

There are valid reasons to produce GM crops, to improve yield, drought resistance, pest resistance etc (sadly very little money in helping subsistance farmers in third world). But currently the only money going into GM research is about pesticide/herbicide resistance etc. which is a really bad idea for the environment. (see my last post).

I think people should definitely be wary of Genetic Modification but for the right reasons and not because of scaremongering journalism.
If people are dead set against GM they should focus on environmental effects of monoculture rather than because the food is bad for them.

I don't think many would be against the idea of a crop that could grow using only half the water currently used. Think of how many more people we could feed in the hotter (often poorer countries) of the world, the price of food would go down etc etc. Sadly I may be cynical but that research is not going to get the funding needed because there is more money in having western farmers buy their pesticide/herbicide resistant crops and the poisons...