This post was inspired by the latest post of Primal Toad (link here). Now, I’m not calling out Primal toad but the whole ideology that he shares -with many paleo enthusiast- that conventional wisdom is always wrong (Interestingly enough, science is always wrong when you don’t study it) and that if something is not demonstrated (or at least badly demonstrated) to be detrimental to your health, it must be healthy. If it’s healthy, then we have to eat these foods in very large amounts. Amounts that are not necessarily natural (they require you to go out of your way to get more of these foods in). Toad posted mainly about saturated fat and cholesterol which is what I will base my short rebuttal on.
I find the data to be insufficient -or at least conflicting- to make conclusions about saturated fats and cholesterol. Yes, you need both of them. No, it’s probably not the most intelligent idea ever to focus on getting as much of it as possible.
By this, I mean that cholesterol and saturated fat should not exclusively be the reason why you consume certain foods. For instance, egg is a wonderful food because of its high vitamin content, protein content and availability as well as overall energy. It is not a great food because of it’s cholesterol content but because of the reason I have listed. Before you go all crazy and start cursing like a pirate (or like a caveman since most of my readership are just modern cavemen/woman), let me tell you that I’m known for my ability to eat 10 eggs (cooked in butter) as a breakfast. That means I’m not afraid of the stuff nor am I preaching a low fat, low animal products diet. What I am preaching is common sense and objectivity.
I eat them for the protein and energy. Not the cholesterol.
Still the point is, you gotta be careful with the way you deal with things and the message you send to the world. Low fat (30% of your calories as fat, as is advised) is technically not a problem at all. High carb (60-70% of your calories as carbs, as is advised) is technically not a problem at all. Plenty of epidemiology studies demonstrate this. I know, this type of studies sucks…except when you pull one about eskimos or another tribe, right?
Really, as long as you pick foods that you seem to do well on (aka foods you pick in nature for the most part), you are doing fine. For some it means a high meat diet. For others, it can be a diet lower in meat. My theory is that it’s all about the quality of the food you eat instead of the composition of the diet itself (macro nutrient, etc). Obviously, if we are going to use an evolutionary perspective, this make sense. Macro nutrients were cycled. Feast and famine. And sometimes the feast would involve stuffing your skinny ass with potatoes (a strategy that has persisted till today and made humans survive quite well actually). On the other end, quality was rarely an issue. It’s not like you would find mutant foods in an environment that was NOT dominated by humans.
This brings us to paleo dogma bullshit that plague the internet world the way freaking vegetarians seem to be everywhere around here. I get to hear their rhetoric bullshit in my nutrition class as well as at the metro station where they want us to sign some peta petitions. Same shit, different smell. All opinions, no fact.
The supposed idea of a perfect diet is ridiculous for various reasons : (a) not everyone is the same (genetics, etc.) (b) not everyone do the same thing (sleep, lifestyle, job, etc.) (c) not everyone is active (no matter what the so called paleo exercise haters tell you, exercise is a must and it will greatly enhance various processes that we are actually trying to improve with diet…insulin sensitivity, blood pressure, etc.) (d) not everyone as access to the same resources (foods or money). (e) everyone has a different health record.
I’m not a scientist (yet…but nutrition is not the field I will be studying) but from my less than optimally educated perspective, the only thing that has been demonstrated -either by scientific facts or by anecdotal experience is that a diet as natural (hunter gatherer style) as possible usually make people healthier.
/rant
