But what happens when some kids and his cool friends first stumble on a crossfit video?

I have been working as personal trainer in a globo gym for the last few months. Every now and then, some guy will come to me and try to make me learn about crossfit as if I have been out of the loop for the past few years. My issue with it is that all these crossfit fans who don’t crossfit don’t get the real take home points. All they remember from these videos is how some dude can do 100 bodyweight squats and 100 kipping pullups. And…that’s about it.

Crossfit fans who don’t crossfit… You piss me off!!!

People don’t want to work hard (read : heavy) in the gym. When these kids see met cons – and actually think it’s strength training- it gives them an excuses to bench more ligth weight reps for more [useless] sets. It gives them an excuse to stay weak. To be mediocre. To be the kid with all the advice and little of the experience. This is all echoed by my experience as a PT  in the gym.

What these people should really fall in love with is this : Crossfitters lift HEAVY for A FEW REPS once in a while. This is why crossfit has grown so much. Oh, and, Crossfitters use REAL LIFTS such as the snatch, cleans, deadlift and squat. Kid, when is the last time you have done any of the following? You have not squatted since… Well since you started working out. This kid does not need to learn kipping pullups or does not need to bench press more light weight. He needs to get down in the hole with a freakin’ bar on his back!

Oh, and women are not different. They notice how female crossfitter have nice abs and they think it’s all because of met cons and/or the occasional crossfit run. While it’s partly true (met cons = burn fat), what these woman don’t seem to see is that female crossfitter do ”MEN” LIFTS. They ain’t toying around with 5lbs pink dumbbells. They snatch, they front squat, they press overhead and they look good because of that.

The bottom line is this : Next time you check out a crossfit video, try to pay a bit more attention to the actual strength work that crossfit involves. Met cons are fine but they are far from being what most people (in globo gyms) need. They need to start training heavy.

Here is a link to part 1 (introduction : link here) and part 2 (Arguments for the importance of warming up : Link here) of this series. The past two posts made it clear that warming up is a must. You should not skip your warm up, period! However, one problem remains : How do we actually warm up?

No, your arm stretch before your bench is not a great way to warm up.

No, doing 2 sets of high rep curl is not an efficient way to maximize the benefits of a good warm up.

No, doing ”kicks” is not a good way to warm up if you are going to work your upper body (Yes, I see this a lot in the gym).

Okay, enough, enough! Get to the point JP.

A fair warning

This kind of training needs you to work on your mobility and flexibility quite a lot.

Warm ups, like training plans, should be somewhat individualized. The core of the warm up should be somewhat similar for everyone. However, I liked to add a few specific exercises as a way to improve performance.

The following protocols is based on my needs, strength, mobility and weakness. The basic idea should work for about anyone. You should however feel free to make substitutions. I have included a few guidelines that should help you do this.

Some okish guidelines

Warm up length : 10-15 minutes

Cardio warm up: 4-6 minutes

Muscular warm up : 3-5 minutes

Specific work/mobility : 3-4 minutes

Protocol #1 : The boring, yet effective one.

Cardio warm up :

Concept 2 rower : 30 seconds low-moderate intensity, 30 seconds moderate-high intensity

Muscular warm up :

Front squat with a 25lbs plate held in front of me, 2×8.

Overhead squat with an Olympic bar, 2×8

Hips raise 2×12

Push ups 2×12

Specific :

Scapula pushups 1×20

External rotation of the shoulder with a band, 1×20

Shoulder dislocation 1x2o

Standing reverse flies with a band1×20

(cardio warm up = 4-5 minutes)

(muscular warm up = about 5 minutes)

(specific work = about 2 minutes)

The exercises should not feel hard. We are doing this only so we can activate muscles to have a better strength training session. Exercises should be done somewhat slow. You should feel fresh and ready for the real workout when you finish. If you feel tired, you went too hard at it.

Protocol #2 : My favourite, the time saver.

Complex 1 (cardio and muscular warm up…at the same time!)

E1 : Hang snatch

E2 : Overhead squat

E3 : Good morning

E4 : Military press

E5 : Front squat

E6 : Hang clean

5 reps, 3 rounds

Specific work :

Scapula pushups 1×20

External rotation of the shoulder with a band, 1×20

Shoulder dislocation 1x2o

Standing reverse flies with a band1x20

(Should last about 10 minutes)

Again, it should not feel like a real workout. The complex should make you breath more heavily but it should not tire you out. Keep the weight challenging but not too heavy either. I keep the same specific work as my issues are still the same. Focus on technique.

Question 1: JP, why do you use so many squat and shoulder exercises in your warm up.

As I said earlier, the warm up should be somewhat individualized. I include a lot of squat exercises because my training include a lot of leg work (squat, snatch, cleans, deadlifts, etc). I find that sitting in a chair all day make me stiff a lot at the hips(being a student means getting stiff). Thus, full range of motion squat done slowly tends to improve my flexibility and mobility before the real leg exercises.

As for the shoulder exercises, I have said quite a few times in the past that I have had to deal with shoulder problems. It’s important that i focus on my shoulder mobility, flexibility and especially stability now that I am focusing on Olympic weightlifting. Snatching and overhead squats require a good amount of flexibility and stability.

Question 2 : JP, I can’t do – nor plan- to do exercises like snatches, overhead squats and cleans. What should I do?

I use snatches, overhead squats and cleans because I like to work on my technique while warming up. You don’t have to use the same exercises as I do. I also use these exercises because they are quite good at improving my hip mobility (as long as you go ass to ground).

Instead, you could use other awesome hip mobility exercises : Kettlebell/Dumbbell swings, Hips raises, back/front squat, etc. Just make sure the range of motion is right. Remember : We don’t want to go heavy…we want to work on the range of motion. Also, you can learn to do overhead squats with a broomstick first, if the barbell OHS is too hard.

Question 3 : JP, your warm up protocol seem to be long (I’m used to do a few arm circles and that’s it). I would even argue that it’s a bit too long. Anyway we can make it shorter?

Of course. This is just an example of what seems to work for me considering my own issues (which I got from not warming up correctly by the way). You could make it shorter by focusing on Kettlebells swings, kettlebells snatches and goblet squats for example. Some kind of circuits done for 5-8 minutes should fit the bill. Point is : you need to up your heart beat rate and make your muscles ready for the strength training session.

As a side note, I think it should be clear by now that the ”Grok squat” held for a few seconds is not a proper warm up.

Conclusion

This is it. You now have the basic information needed to improve your performance in the gym. If you should remember a single point of this post, it’s that you should base your warm up on your own needs. Were are you tight? Were are/were you injured? What muscles will you work? What kind of objective do you have? Actually, you should always keep this in mind when you address anything sport/training related.

I introduced vaguely the importance of warming up correctly in part 1 of this series. The original article can be read here : Link. Today, we will explore some of the reasons why warming up make sense. We won’t go in too much details as this can be very complex. I will try my best to make it easy to read by everyone.

Steady state exercise induce a debt in oxygen within the first 5 minutes

Ever wondered why it’s always the first few minutes of your jog session that are the hardest?

Like most people, you probably thought that you were out of shape. While this may be the case, most people experience this lack of oxygen that makes the first few minutes hard. This is a completely normal physiological response to exercise.

This O2 debt is due to the ”slow-ish” adaptation of the cardiovascular system to exercise demand. In order to get to the top plateau (minute 1.5 to minute 5.5 in the graph) where O2 uptake = O2 need (oxygen consumption is matched with O2 need), you need to get in more oxygen.

The main point is that we need a higher cardiac output in order to match the O2 need. For most, this means that your heart beat rate needs to go up. It also means that your systolic ejection volume (”the blood that is pumped out of your heart”) need to increase. For trained people, only the SEV is high. Indeed, trained people pump out more blood every heart beat so they don’t necessarily need to make their heart pump ”faster” as their heart has become more efficient(which is why the more trained you are, the lower your heart beat seems to be). More blood pumped out means more O2 in direction of the active tissue. Cardiac output can be up to 5 times higher when you exercise compared to it’s basal value.

Cardiac output is calculated as follow : Cardiac Output = Heart rate x SEV.

To make this process even more efficient, we notice vaso-constriction to limit blood flow toward ”inactive” tissues. This is why we see a reduction of blood flow toward some organs and an increase of blood flow toward active tissue (muscle, heart, etc.). This vaso-constriction is mainly due to adrenalin and nor-adrenalin which are released as you exercise (other factors too). This vaso-constriction adaptation is quite important as it means the blood pumped out of the heart will get back in the heart faster (=more 02 being sent toward the muscles).

According to Chapman and Mitchel. I could not find it in english. Coeur = heart. Peau = Skin. Rein = Kidney. Notice how blood flow doesn't change for the brain and how we reduce the blood we send toward the abdomen.

Exercise is a sympathetic stimulation. We could compare the sympathetic nervous system to a woman with an unloaded credit card in her favourite shop (bad joke, bad analogy). Its role is to ”spend” and ”up regulate”. As we have seen, it makes our heart beat faster. However, I’m only bringing the sympathetic nervous system in this quick essay for its vaso-dilation role in active tissues (muscle).

To sum up, we notice a reduction of blood flow toward inactive tissues (vaso-constriction) and an augmentation of blood flow toward active tissues (vaso-dilation). The main goal is to match the O2 debt. This is why warming up is important : if the o2 debt is matched, your performance will be higher.

Other factors cause the O2 debt and help lessen its impact. However, it is out of the scope of this article.

Experience based opinions

In very simple (way too simple) terms : We know that power is calculated as follow : Power = Strength x speed. We also know that power/strength gains are mostly due to the adaptation of the CNS (central nervous system). The CNS is pretty much the ”windows” (or linux, if you are a geek) of the human body. It controls everything from breathing to muscles to hormones. CNS adaptation is quite important if we are looking for strength. However, it’s also quite important if we want to prevent injuries.

Indeed, through CNS adaptation we can make our body move more ”right” during exercise or to make it used to the growing tension we put on it. It takes thousands of times/tries to make a locomotion pattern an automatism. There is a reason why real strength athletes don’t lift their 1rm every session, day in, day out.

Case in point : The sport of olympic weightlifting (which involves two moves : The snatch and the clean and jerk) is quite complex. It’s so complex that new athletes often spend up to three months only learning the moves (if not more). Learning the moves refers to making them become an automatism. Even trained athletes often use percentage of their 1rm (example : 75% 1rm x 2 reps) and they still do a lot of what they call ”tech work”.

Technique work is definitely what I am referring to here. This is why warming up is important : A warm up that involves lots of technique work will undoubtedly reduce the chances that you will injure yourself. It makes sense : you teach your body the right way to move and you make it get use to the tension. Plus, it tends to make your articulations more stable and loosen up some tight muscles.

Stay tuned : I will post my warm up protocol tomorrow.

I originally planned to make it a two post series. I also planned to give more evidence of the importance of warm ups. However, my main two arguments (counter the O2 debt and CNS activation/adaptation) sum up pretty much everything. Plus, this post has more than 1k words and the last thing I want is bore my reader. I hope this post made you change your view of warm ups (and hopefully your bad habits).

Warm ups…What are they? How should they be done? Why do they matter? How come specialists don’t always agree on this topic? Are they recommended ? Should they be avoided? Should focus on mobility? on stretching? on upping our heart beat rate?

warming up is a must if you are looking for performance, functionality and strength

If you are looking for an answer to these questions, this post is for you. If you are not, it is still something you should read. Part 1 focus mainly on making fun of all kinds of weird claims we get to read online/hear in the gym. I consider it to be a funny read and a good way to gently introduce the importance of warming up when you seek performance. Part 2, of this two part series, will look at some scientific evidence that warming up is important. We will keep this simple so that the information can be understood by everyone. Of course, as always, don’t hesitate to ask questions/debate.

Forget about what these self proclaimed internet fitness gurus say. They are just using poor logic and definitely lack rhetoric skills.

”Grok did not warm up so you should not.”

”You should not have to warm up when you want to do something.”

”It’s illogical to think that paleo men would have to warm up before going on a hunt trip.”

”Warm up, like proper form, is an invention of the modern exercise ”specialists”.”

”Warming up is not going to prevent injuries”.

The list goes on and on and nobody is getting any smarter from reading these lies. The worst thing is that people who, unfortunately, don’t know any better or just lack skills in the ”critical thinking” department if you know what I mean.

No, really, forget about these claims….Or we can just make fun of them!

Let’s first make it clear that these claims are what I consider uneducated claims. They are false. They have no scientific basis. They are borderline – or completely- dangerous. They are funny, too. Quite funny actually. Let’s take a look at them quickly :

”Grok did not warm up so you should not.”

Grok did not exist in the first place. Grok is a poor metaphor that happens to help countless of people understand quickly Sisson’s primal diet (Good or bad, depending on the scenario). Still, what grok represent is a superhero (super-caveman) living in the wild who hunts so efficiently that even a huge ass prehistoric lion would fear him. It’s so far from the truth that it would make an anthropologist cry at night. Humans always need to glorify humans. We are good. We are the best. Oh, boy, we sure are good at certain things (somethings better than others) but we are far from being what people make Grok to be.

What Grok does not represent (and what he should actually represent in people’s mind) is context. One size fits all ideologies/solutions are bound to fail because they don’t take into account the intrinsic needs of the person. Now, primal blueprint fans, I’m not bashing Sisson here. I’m however having a shot at those who use this poor metaphor as a way to justify their poor fitness habits.

Grok did not sit in chairs all day. Grok was not inactive all day long. Grok was not feeling mentally drained from the latest 4 hours meeting. You don’t hunt your food. You don’t fight predators. You don’t spend your day walking around and gathering berries in paleo-land. The list goes on and on and nobody is getting any smarter from reading this. You are not Grok so stop freakin’ pretending you are. And, for the record, guys you are not Arnold and, girls, you ain’t Scarlet Jonhanson either. Context…Context is important because it provides us the proper information required to make you a better athlete.

”You should not have to warm up when you want to do something.”

Define ”something” please. Obviously, walking and deadlifting three time your weight is the same thing. I rest my case.

”It’s illogical to think that paleo men would have to warm up before going on a hunt trip.”

Refer to the part about grok. Though, I will say this : Many tribes actually had rituals where they would dance, sing, and do all kind of weird moves that show the rest of the tribe how strong they are supposed to be. By the way, ever seen a power lifter kind of dance before setting up a PR (personal record)? I think we are up to something here. Does that sound like a prehistoric mobility/warm up session to you?

”Warm up, like proper form, is an invention of the modern exercise ”specialists”.”

Yeah, and who are you again? You been drinking the bro kool aid again ? Or, may be you just have some good troll-fu going on. Modern exercise specialists are surely not the ones who help thousands of athletes perform better. I think the most qualified people to talk about proper form, warming up, exercise techniques, programming, etc. are specialist. I’m sorry pal, but you lack credibility. Obviously, if we are seeking performance, we are also seeking functionality. Made a link between warming up, proper form and performance yet? But, hey, may be if you did a proper warm up, you would not round-back deadlift so much…bro.

”Warming up is not going to prevent injuries”.

Says the guy who has benching shoulder problems. Seriously though, it’s true that static stretching has been demonstrated in various studies to be useless before working out as a way to reduce injuries (One exception might be stretching hip flexors). However, when I am talking about warming up, I don’t have static stretching in mind. Rhetoric nonsense, again.

To sum it all

This is part one of a two-part series about warming up in order to improve performance in the gym and/or sports. The claims I, jokingly, made fun of (because they are false, wrong, stupid, etc.) won’t still sounds ”true” to you once you read part 2.
Part 2 can be found here : LINK

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience. -- Paulo Coelho

Inspired by Richard’s post (Link here) about lame ass vegan propaganda (”you can’t be paleo, lean, muscular and strong at the same time”), I decided to show the world how a diet based on evolutionary knowledge of food has transformed my body and performance. Another reason I am posting this is that although some of my posts seem anti-paleo at times, I want to stress that an evolutionary diet is best. My stance on paleo eating is that it needs to be based on common sense.

Before

I have been skinny all my life. Four years ago, when I tested my body fat percentage with a not-so perfect method, I was 4% at 6ft 135lbs. Now, that’s skinny. My diet consisted mostly of carbs, fast food (I ate a shit load of McDonald’s) and the like. Tired of being weak, I started weigthlifting. Oh, I Benched and I curled like a real ”man”…At that time I was on my way to create structural damage that I still struggle with today (mainly my shoulder) although I’m getting good at rehab (read the opening quote…). I wanted to be strong but I also wanted to be healthy.

What does an 17-18 years old guy do when he wants to learn about things? He google stuff and hope to find something that will help him. When you are not that educated, anything that look somewhat sciency (big words that don’t mean anything, and a picture of a lean dude will do) will fit the bill.

Enter my vegetarian days

It lasted about three to five months. That’s the most retarded thing I have ever done. My immunity went downhill. I once got so sick that I had to sleep for an entire week without eating while having trouble breathing. I still don’t know what it was but my throat was like cement. I lost 10lbs during that week. That transformed me in a 125lbs weak ass skinny dude.

When I was vegetarian, I had trouble sleeping. I could spend 2 to 3 days without sleeping. I had no energy at all. My motivation was at it’s lowest and I just plainly hated the world. I just was not happy.

Then, my girlfriend of the time converted me back to meat eating by shoving smoked salmon in my face. What could I do? Smoked salmon is just freaking good. My mother actually did a similar trick with my sister. My sister tried to be a vegetarian for a while and my mother cooked her some crazy good ”Paté chinois” (ground beef, corn, mashed potato…crazy delicious meal).

Paté Chinois : technically not paleo, but I still eat the stuff.

Here is a picture of me in 2007. You will notice how skinny I was and how my body composition sucked as much as the guy at 30bananasaday.com (Link here)

By the way, this picture was taken after a workout. Yes, you can laugh. 6ft 135lbs

Today

I have always focused my training on strength. I really like the idea behind relative strength. Relative strength is calculated with a weight lifted to bodyweight ratio (Aka, lifting three time your bodyweight when you do deadlift is amazing). So, I never really focused my training on gaining muscular mass. I focused my training on making my CNS as good as possible.

I did all sort of training. I’m really into bodyweight training (especially pullups, dips and gymnastic-like moves such as back lever, muscle ups, etc). In the past, I have deadlifted twice my bodyweight. I have done muscle ups for reps. I have done 16 pullups in a row. I have done backlevers. I have almost military pressed my bodyweight (I should train my military press again…). I have hit a ”kipping” planche (I can get the elbow lever easily though). I have done 30+ (stopped counting) dips in a row. And yesterday, after complexes (consisting of cleans, military press, back squat, high pulls and front squat) and heavy deadlifts, I did chin ups with 25lbs added for 2 sets of 5 (aka, I did this while being completely fatigued).

Those are not amazing feat of strength for the average joe. To me, however, that’s amazing progress. When I started, I could not even do more than 20 pushups! I have come a long way and I plan to keep going.

How is my immunity? Let’s just say that I get sick at most once a year. When I get the flu – if I get it- it last no more than three days.

How is my sleep? Much better.

How is my body composition? Really far from what vegan morons will tell you. Supposedly, if you eat meat, you are supposed to have a fat gut… Well, here is the fun thing. I have absolutely not focused on gaining mass. I have focused on being strong. Low reps & heavy reps style. I’m now 170lbs, about 10% bf (during the summer months) or 12% (during the winter months).

Money shot :

Myspace like picture. I weigth 35lbs more and hypertrophy was never the goal. Post training too

I won’t pretend that I am big. But, I have moved away from the skinny categorization. I like to say that I’m not skinny, nor big. I’m just athletic.

Here are some other pictures of me that were taken during the last year :

From now on

I plan to keep training hard and eat an evolutionary diets. Lately, I have been toying with olympic weight lifting (still learning the moves). I plan to do a lot of calisthenics this summer and do one or two sessions of olympic lifting/squat/deadlift a week. I have included some not paleo foods in my diet for the purpose of my goals. Those foods are cottage cheese and oats. These foods represent about 10% of my calorie intake. Most of my diet is meat, eggs and plant foods.

PS : Vegetarism/Veganism suck if you are looking for health, strength and good bodycomposition. I hope this post made this point clear.

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

As I said earlier this month, I will be posting a bit more studies and science posts.

Here is a study from the Department of Nutritional Sciences of University of Connecticut about eggs, cholesterol, metabolic syndrome & restricted carbohydrate diet. Another nail in the coffin of the cholesterol myth?

I want to take a minute to thank all of my readers. I also want to thank everybody who commented on my posts and made this experience fun and worth it. I swear I will be more present in 2011.

The blog might change it’s orientation a bit. I’m thinking about putting the focus of the blog on other topics than nutrition as I feel pretty much everything as been covered. I have also reached a point where I feel that nutrition science gets way too much attention for what it really is. I feel like it’s more of a belief-oriented ”science”. This is the case for all nutrition community, paleo included.

What I really want to do is write posts about topics that I feel are often ignored, yet very interesting (however, some bloggers do a good job at covering some of them). These topics include psychology, neurology, sociology, biology (how funny is it that we only rarely talk about the evolutionary part of ”evolutionary nutrition”) and more. By no means I am an expert on these topics but I expect to have a good discussion with you all. May be we can all learn something from each other and make this year the best. Really, commenter are the only reason I’m still dedicating time to this blog. I have stated in about every post : I like to debate and I love a good discussion. To quote Aristotle, ”Man is by nature a political animal.”

So, here is to you, my friends, Happy new year!

Remember, it all started with the sect-like pledge that you had to make in order to start your new life : Forget everything you know about nutrition. Sounds a lot like fight club (which would explain the lack of diversity and originality we suffer as a micro society…) : ”From now on, all those with shaved heads: “Space Monkeys”. Like a monkey, ready to be shot into space. Space monkey! Ready to sacrifice himself for the greater good.”.

Fat and animal produces used to be your Satan. Oh, but not anymore! You now gorge yourself on bloody pieces of meat like a pagan. You are, oh, so cool (we really are that cool, to be honest). You are now a ”space monkey”, ready to sacrifice yourself to prove that it’s healthy to eat a diet that we actually have been eating for millions of years…and it is healthy! It really is. Obviously. That’s why you no longer are diabetic, fat or weak. You even have more libido.

You have come to believe that all the problems in the world – no matter how complex they are- are due to a few factors : grains (wheat), legumes (soy), dairy (evil casein and lactose) and sugar (evil fructose). Reductionism is paleo, so don’t worry about the big picture. Like a religious missionary, you travel the world (your circle of friends will do) to promote the good news : ”Dear followers, love animal produces like meat and fat. Hate on wheat, legumes, dairy and sugar”.

I love to be sarcastic and ironic, so please excuse me. OK, ok, 300 words is a long enough introduction.I wouldn’t want to bore you or even make you feel insulted. It’s just my kind of humour.

Wheat has been blamed for about any modern health problems from diabetes to obesity to immune problems. Supposedly, it’s a modern thing… well ever since agriculture started a few thousand years ago. Yet, most of the problems wheat is supposed to be causing are less than 100 years old. The rise of these problems is new while the problems themselves probably existed in a very small percentage in some societies.

My question is this : How can wheat, which has been consumed by human societies for more or less 6-10 000 years, be blamed for the rise of health problems in the last 50 years? Wouldn’t we have either adapted to wheat or stopped eating it if it made us sick?

The paleo officer told me he would not link my blog anymore

Now, hold your horses, paleo police officers. I want to be allowed to the next paleo party so allow me to state that I believe that wheat should not be consumed. Indeed, evolutionary speaking, it was not designed to be eaten. This is observable by the toxins present in wheat. I won’t go further in this direction as it has been covered to death by various experts. What I want to question is the relationship between wheat consumption and the rise of health problems.

The world is a dangerous place. Thousands of predators could have completely wiped out the human species. Let’s not even talk about the competition between predators… It would probably remind us that today’s world is as focused on competition as the old world. We don’t want that (Admit it, we need to rant about our sadist boss/professors/etc once in a while).

Who talked about competition?

On the other hand, there is also a few thousands of plants species that could kill about any humans if we did consume them. Interestingly enough, we do not consume them for this very reason (natural selection took care of the problem and people gained knowledge). So, if wheat is a very dangerous food, then why are we still eating it? More importantly, why is civilization based on such a dangerous treat to the civilization itself? Wouldn’t our ancestors have added wheat to their black list that consists of thousands of dangerous foods ?

To me, this suggests that wheat might only be mildly dangerous. In other words, it was not dangerous enough to stop the consumption of it. It was a good crop in the sense that it was very easy to grow and it would provide enough calories to feed a family. Don’t pull down the whole age argument on me yet (farmers lived less longer than hunter gatherers). When it comes down to it, the cost versus reward of wheat consumption was profitable. By the way, some of the healthiest ancestral societies Dr.Price visited ate grains.

If wheat really was to blame for all the problems we have in our society, then we would probably have witnessed the end of civilization a great while ago. The rise of health problems can’t be all blamed on wheat consumption alone (otherwise,the rise wouldn’t have started 50 years ago). See, the point I am trying to make here is that health problems are not simple and they can’t be explained with a single factor. I will never recommend eating wheat because it’s potentially dangerous. More importantly, it takes the place of more valuable and important foods in our diet such as meat, veggies and fruits. We now have the choice of eating better foods, so we might as well do it.  Cost versus reward and benefits versus cons.

This ­­> Wheat, for health problems.

I suggest that the industrialization of foods – especially of wheat, soy and sugar- made us unhealthy. The original food items were probably not as bad as we think until we started to heavily and industrially transform them into cakes, frozen dinners, margarine, disgusting and tasteless oils, twinkies, meat-looking substances, pasta and bread. At least, it is much more logic as it correlate with the temporal data of the health problems rise. In my opinion, industrialization of food is a better explanation of our current health state than wheat consumption is.

In other words, if you do eat grains a la WAPF, it’s probably not VERY VERY bad although not optimal. However, if you eat processed foods, you are just wasting your efforts.

EDIT : Whereas I preferred to use sarcasm and humour to make my point, Mike preferred to use data. Check his post here. It’s worth it.

Money > Health

As time goes by, nutrition science is getting more and more popular . I remember when I first got interested by nutrition, I was amazed at how little [good] information about food was available. Most of the information available was based on myth, beliefs and pseudo theories. Unfortunately, little has changed since then. At the time, I was looking for a way to improve my performance in the gym. I was very underweight and I had a pathetic level of strength. I wasn’t pleased about my slow progress and I figured that the quality -instead of the quantity- of calories I was eating might play a bigger role. A few years later, I’m amazed at how popular (how mainstream) nutrition has become when you consider how limited  progress we  made since the golden age of nutrition (The era of vitamin discoveries).

Folks, let’s face it : the optimal diet is yet to be found. Indeed, I’m amazed at how popular it has become to talk about nutrition when you consider how fragile the pillars of such an argumentation are. For instance, I can’t say how often I have heard one of the following statement in a casual discussion with friends: ”Sorry, I can’t eat that, there is bad fat in this food”, ”I’m on a low carbs diet, I want to lose weight”, ”I’m eating tons of vegetables because I don’t want to die of cancer”, ”No, sorry, can’t do… I’m watching my calories”, ”OMGZ vitamin water soooooooooooo healthy dude!” or ”I went for the low fat and low sodium 100 calories biscuit packs so I can control my calories”. It’s trendy to talk about nutrition.

Would we have heard any of these claims 80 years ago? No! Nutrition science was not as popular and it cared more about general health than optimization. By the way, it takes more than ”nutritional optimization” (as if it even exist) to be healthy. Just saying.

More importantly, nutrition science was not as present in the media. Nutrition started getting popular the moment we noticed a mind shift in the media ($$$$$$). In other words, the moment they realized that they could make money with media, they started to optimize their strategy to do so and applied it to about any topic. Nutrition was no different.

At least, neurology is useful

I have said it many times : If you want to have a huge impact in a given society, all you need to do is play the ”fear card”. In this perspective, it’s no wonders that nutrition is so present in media. Indeed, reporters know how to get readers to read their science deprived articles by using certain words combinations to their advantage. Actually, scratch that. People only read the headline so you might as well make it extremely catchy if you want ”readers”.

As a side note, how many readers do you think I would have right now if I changed the title of this post to ”Bacon removes 10 years from your lifespan, scientists say” [fictive claim!]? A lot! If you know how to play the ”fear card”, you know how to control people and make money.

The pillars of nutrition science are weak because of the approach used. Population studies are irrevelant in most cases and, yet, they are very popular. I think we all remember the china study pseudo scientific craze and how biased the whole thing is.

The focus in lots of diet trials is on nutrients instead of foods. While you can play with foods, it’s very hard to play with nutrients. How can you be sure it’s the ratio of nutrients – instead of the food choices, total calories, type of nutrients, and the person itself- that really produced the results?

Most studies are short term studies. Also, using questionnaire as a way to gauge food intake and choices has been done extensively. We all know how unreliable these questionnaires are : People lie in these questionnaires.

Diabetes in a box!

The biggest problem in my opinion is the lack possible comparison between diets. Diets are a cultural thing (an inuit eats very differently than an Australian aborigine). Also, believe it or not, some people can be healthy by eating crappy foods (at least ”look healthy” on various tests). We all remember the twinkie diet guy, don’t we [refer to my comment about short term studies]? So, how do we know if it is a certain food, a cultural habbit or the lack of a certain food that is making us sick? In other words, it’s very hard to define what being healthy really means.

Another problem we face is the lack of multidisciplinary knowledge amongst nutrition experts. How can we know if something is good to cure cancer if we understand very little about cancer in the first place? How can nutritionists try to help people if they have limited education in biology, genetics and neurology? Really, nutrition is supposed to be a branch of biology so I would expect nutritionist that have knowledge in metabolism, cellular biology, and even neurology. Yet, most nutritionists (at least around here), have very limited knowledge in these domains.

Mr. Preston of the Abundant Brain blog wrote an interesting post about how we could possibly know for sure if our dietary choices are right. The idea -which comes from Keith Grimaldi- is that if the foods we think are making us sick really make us sick, then we would be able to detect some DNA damage. Therefore, we should spend time researching DNA alteration when consuming foods. In my opinion, this is very good idea because we would be sure of how unhealthy some foods are.

DNA is where it's at.

The bottom line is this : Modern nutrition science sucks because too many variables are into play with no mean of knowing what’s really harmful or not. People are getting fat and most of their focus is nutrition since it’s so popular in the media. However, making people healthier require people with multidisciplinary knowledge and unbiased information. Both are not too present and this is why -not carbs, not fruits, not tubers, not fat, etc.- people are not getting healthier. As a side note, question the claims of all medias. If you want to eat an healthy diet, eat foods you can pick in the nature. It’s the only way to lower the probability of diseases.