How to begin a paleolithic diet?***

1) You really need to educate yourself as to WHY grains, in general are bad--even grains that do not contain gluten--And why gluten is bad for everyone, not just people with celiacs.

2) Saturated fat, has been shown, over and over again in study after study, to be harmless or beneficial. You simply are ignorant of the research. Examples:

answers wrote:

Modern medicine + Caveman diet that matches biological makeup = long life.

Yes. Exactly. You touch on two important concepts.

1) Association is not causation. Paleolithic humans ate far less sugar than do modern humans. Paleo humans lived shorter lives. Therefore, paleo humans died young because of a sugar deficiency???

2) One of the challenges of modern life involves differentiating the technological advances which are helpful from those that are harmful. Many are obviously one (orthopedic surgery) or the other (cigarettes), but others are rather tricky (sunscreen, internet porn)...

akfe wrote:

here's your diet:

have mostly vegetables

some fruit

some whole grains

some nuts/seeds/legumes

a bit of lean meat

a bit of dairy

some fish

very few sweets

and have a good variety

and plenty of water

can't get much better than that.

No.

1) No grains.

2) FATTY meat. FATTY dairy.

Start eating 30 bananas a day.

www.30bananasaday.com

Step 1: Read the book.

Step 2: Read the book for athletes.

Step 3: Follow what's in the book.

I'm not a big proponent of ANY diet from a book. Paleo is more than just "don't eat grains". Like any diet fad....it gets a little contrived.

Our ancestors died from accidents and relatively benign things. There was no cardiovascular disease, no cancer, no diabetes etc. WE brought that on ourselves.

Alan

What book? Who's book?

I started eating my neighbor's cats and dogs. Saved me a ton on groceries and cured him of his animal hording disorder.

answers wrote:

On the contrary to the above:

"Suppose you were forced to live on a diet of red meat and whole milk. A diet that, all told, was at least 60 percent fat — about half of it saturated. If your first thoughts are of statins and stents, you may want to consider the curious case of the Masai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania.

In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist named George Mann, M.D., found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22116724/

Commonality between their opposing diets? Saturated fat.

Wrong. Maasai diet have almost non-existing amount of saturated fat and around 80% of their calories comes from carbs.

It's easy to write something on internet website, like "Maasai eat only saturated fat" or "Aliens control US government".

lol lol lol lol wrote:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/02/04/us-fat-heart-idUSTRE61341020100204http://www.ajcn.org/content/80/5/1102.fullhttp://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract

link 1:

People who ate saturated fat suffered from heart diseases

link 2:

People who ate saturated fat suffered from heart diseases

link 3:

People who ate saturated fat suffered from heart diseases

And most important conclusion there:

"More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat."

And as far as I know, these nutrients DO increase risk even stronger than saturated fat.

So, what's your point?

My point is, elliminate fat almost completely and you will never develop heart disease, moreover, your existing ones will reverse:

"My point is, elliminate fat almost completely and you will never develop heart disease, moreover, your existing ones will reverse:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9863851

"

The study you cited does not support you claim either. The study did not specifically focus on diet. Rather it was a comprehensive lifestyle change in which the experimental group also exercised more, stopped smoking and reduced stress. All of which are generally believed to reduce heart disease. For all we know, the low fat diet could have hindered further improvements. The study is inconclusive with regard to any one lifestyle change.

There's plenty of people free of stress, who exercise alot and don't smoke - yet they have heart diseaases.

Yet once they switch to healthy diet, their disease is gone. Same for cancer in another study.

Please provide a source supporting your claim that cardiovascular disease is cured with diet.

This is from the study you provided, "Twenty-five cardiac events occurred in 28 experimental group patients vs 45 events in 20 control group patients during the 5-year follow-up"

Even in the experimental group with the "improved" diet the incidence of cardiac events is reduced not eliminated. So yes you were correct to say that people who don't smoke, don't exercise and live with less stress do experience heart attacks. But they likely reduce their chances of one occurring.

You missed part when they started with very, very advanced heart disease. It take time to cure it completetely, and if you read full study, not only abstract, you will realize that difference between Ornish and normal diet groups increased during time.

They measured level of plagues on arteria walls and it was gone over time - but it take years.

Yes it was reduced but you don't know by which factor. Aerobic exercise has been shown to increase HDL which helps to eliminate plaque. Could the improvements have come from eliminating sugar and refines carbs from the diet or an increase in fiber from fruits and vegetables? How can you conclude that saturated fat was the primary cause. Furthermore, was there a calorie reduction that reduced body fat and improved triglycerides?

No one can be 100% sure which factor leads to improvement, but fact remains - so far it's only and one proved case of reversed atherosclerosis (and reversed cancer, if it matters). At Atkins diet (very similar to paleo) heart disease progressed much faster than on typical American diet, as it was proved in studies.

If a caveman killed a large animal, such as a wooly mammoth, wouldn't he have eaten just meat for days on end? Shouldn't that be part of the diet, huge hunks of raw meat until you can't eat any more?

In my opinion, vegetarian diets are healthy because of the nutrients they include not necessarily because they eliminate meat. And I don't think atkins is healthy either. If you eliminate vegetables and fruits you're going to have issues. However, to my knowledge paleo diet recommends lean means and tells you to limit saturated fats. Their rational is that the animals they ate were much leaner than the overly fattened pigs, cows and chickens we eat today. They'd be consuming something with the fat content of venison. The problem with paleo is that if you're burning a lot of calories you will have to increase your fat intake. Either that or 20+ apples a day.

ask running art he lives on raw meat and roots

I'm two days in and feeling good with the new diet. Mosty fruit and veggies with some chicken and eggs. I also wait 3-4 hrs before eating again, so my body can use the nutrients properly before overloading my body again...because extra sugar just gets stored as fat. I've noticed i feel more alert and less groggy and dont get the afternoon tired feeling.