[ExI] More evidence for incomplete human adaptation to grain-based diets

Dave Sill sparge at gmail.com
Thu Nov 18 01:40:19 UTC 2010


2010/11/17 Stefano Vaj <stefano.vaj at gmail.com>:
> On 16 November 2010 21:42, Dave Sill <sparge at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Paleo diet proponents--at least the ones
>> I've read so far--argue that nobody should eat grains in any amount
>> because our bodies can't handle them.
>
> Why, it appears then that you chose not to read my replies... :-)

My apologies. I read your replies but I must have missed that.

> As I said, I am perfectly sure that we could wait for natural selection to
> "adapt" us to what is (still) for us a rather unnatural diet, which brings
> along innumerable pathologies and inconveniences in almost all of its fans.
> Or we could even deliberately re-engineer ourselves to thrive on simple
> sugars and starch.

Or we could re-engineer grains to be more digestible and more nutritious.

> The real question is: why?

Because we need them to feed the current population? Because some of
us like them?

> We had very serious reasons in the past to accept - or rather: to make the
> unwashed masses to accept - such a dietary change. But those reasons might
> be fading away in the mid-term, and in the meantime anybody who does have a
> choice would be ill-advised to remain addicted to such a nutritional life
> style.

It's a matter of personal choice. If people overeat or eat things they
don't tolerate well, that's their decision. Or at least, it's their
decision if they're aware of it. Publicizing the grain intolerance
issue and promoting genetic testing or trial grain-free dieting would
be a good thing. But pushing the "paleo" angle and the "rightness" of
the "paleo diet" is just marketing designed to sell books or
supplements or ..., and it's likely to crash and burn if some million
year old granary or mill is discovered someday, or genetic evidence of
long-term grain adaptation in the human genome is discovered someday.

And the anti-grain thing is just one aspect of the "paleo diet".
Another keystone is eliminating dairy. Now, I realize there are
differences between various mammal's milk, but to assert that we're
not adapted to a diet of milk is a little absurd.

Or how about the sugar prohibition? Sure, Og didn't have table sugar
on his table--because he didn't have a table, of course. But he surely
ate honey. Honey is on some "paleo diets", grudgingly, but what about
various other natural sweeteners like date sugar, fruit juice, stevia,
etc.?

Then there's the salt prohibition. Coastal cavemen probably found some
foods tasted better with a little sea water on them. Too bad: no salt
for you.

A lot of the "paleo diet" movement seems to be overly eager to
prohibit things. Maybe it's easier to prohibit grains across the board
than to explain that personal tolerances vary, and that consumption
should be limited to x% of calories/day even for people who do
tolerate them well. Or maybe it makes the diet seem more "extreme".
Some probably even get a perverse pleasure from the self-denial. I
dunno, but it doesn't seem to be based on real facts.

Here's an example from http://www.paleodiet.com/definition.htm :

  The only paleo sweetener is raw honey, and only in limited
quantities. You could argue that very dilute maple syrup is paleo. If
you must have sweetness, another possibility is coconut palm sugar.
But best is to get all sweets out of your diet and get over it.

I like that: best to get over it. This recommendation has nothing to
do with what our ancestors ate or what we can tolerate.

-Dave



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