The Paleo Answer to Lose Weight

Book details

Title: The Paleo Answer: 7 Days to lose Weight.

Author: Loren Cordain, (Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology, Uni of Utah)

Published: U.S.A. 2012. Reflecting American lifestyle & food.

Subject Matter: Food supply information and food plan.

Special Feature: Seven day eating plan.

Table of Contents: Explains “Paleo” (Palaeolithic) meaning Stone Age. Chapters on Saturated fat, vegetarianism, milk, grains, beans, potatoes, supplements, water.

Referenced material: Extensive 48 pages.

Audience: For everyone who needs a guide as to what to eat to be well because following mainstream advice of low fat, high carb, artificial sugars, no sun etc is maintaining and increasing obesity and disease rates.

overview

“The Paleo diet is a general guide which allows 15% of your food intake to be “everyday” food. The book states that not a single study prior 2002 has yet examined all of the combined nutritional aspects of the Paleo diet. I have chosen this book of the many available as it is written by the originator of The Paleo Diet, Loren Cordain and not the many who have jumped on the bandwagon of this knowledge and provided variances that have skewed the basic knowledge.”

My comment: There are many well known published works on eating traditional foods for health and healing. See Appendix for list selection of other publications that share similar information.

“The Paleo Diet is a recommended way of eating for optimum health rather than a diet. It is based on unprocessed foods, carbohydrate from vegetables and fruits, protein from flesh meat (beef, lamb, organ meats, fish, shellfish, chicken, turkey) eggs, nuts & seeds, clean water and sunshine. The book emphasises eating healthy omega 3 and saturated fats.”

Is it really a Stone Age diet or Darwinian medicine? The foods described are foods we ate before processing became the norm and plants and animals were grown without being force fed. We don’t need to go back to the Stone Age to find a basis to eat unprocessed fresh foods.

My comment: As a child I grew up on a dairy farm, and we ate from the land. Home garden, eggs from backyard chooks, free range calves and pigs for meat, milk straight from the cow, homemade butter, bread from the baker that was nothing like the refined gooey mess people eat now and sandwiches were a yearly treat! Fruit was from the orchard and we ran barefoot, swam in the creeks, sun on our bodies, unprocessed salt on our foods and no one was sick. No electromagnetic radiation, no TV, no electric blankets, we grew hardy on cold nights and hot days, no fly screens, and all the food was prepared from scratch including ice cream made with raw milk and cream, a treat of the greatest order. And we didn’t have electricity until I was about eight years old; we had cool boxes and a kerosene fridge. The ice-cream didn’t get very hard!!!

This was only sixty years ago, had nothing to do with evolution but would be considered a “Paleo” diet as it is described in the book. And there was no scientific research to tell my Mum and Dad that this was the way to prepare and feed food to the family for optimum health. There was very little processed ready-made foods available except tinned fruits, jams, baked beans and the like.

Evolutionary Clues

It’s interesting to note the Stone Age food gathering list (p122) and the statement that if enough food is supplied by large animal kill then only this food would have been consumed is pure assumption. Evolutionary clues are not needed as we can look to Australia’s indigenous people; all of the eight foods mentioned were eaten as part of their nomadic lifestyle. First European contact for these people was 1788 when the First Fleet sailed into Botany Bay. Up until this time our indigenous people would have lived a hunter gatherer lifestyle, eating a “Palaeolithic” diet. That was only 200 years ago, no evolutionary clues necessary. What they ate and how they lived is recorded fact.

Darwinian Medicine

An internet search says this was coined in 1991. See the Preface page xv “coughing when you are sick ... fever, vomiting, pain…fever destroys pathogens…” Darwinian medicine would say this response is not necessarily harmful but rather signify the body’s efforts to remedy a problem.” Attributed to Darwin? Really!

This is the basis of Nature Cure (1900’s) before pharmaceutical drugs came to the fore and now Naturopathic medicine, uses symptoms to treat cause and does not suppress symptoms. This has nothing to do with Darwin’s evolutionary hypothesis.

The heavy warning on taking B vitamins and antioxidants is a worry. If we lived without air-conditioning and artificial light, in fresh air, and exercise was encompassed in our work and our water the real deal, as my parents did 50 years ago, then we could do without extra vitamins and minerals. But we don’t now (2010) and in my experience many people need the extra support of concentrated nutrients, which may be taken as “super foods” not tablets. If people continue to live in unnatural conditions, get exercise in a gym, run marathons, work in the sun sweating daily, they need quality concentrated nutrition, especially minerals. .

Salt and Minerals

The author says to eat unprocessed foods which will be without added salt. Unless all foods eaten are certified organic there will be little mineralisation of the produce as soils today are overworked and carry minerals only from artificial fertilisers the result of which shows up in the table on page 30 with nitrates high in non organic food. Excess nitrates limit oxygen in the blood. When we prepare food from scratch, we need to add unprocessed (grey or pink) salt for the minerals, the water balancer of our cellular structure.

“Minerals and mineral supplements added to our meals are in fact a necessity of life. The basic functions of life itself cannot be performed without minerals, either as a major part of the function or as a catalytic cofactor … minerals are the currency of life. The medical profession ignores this truth to the point past the absurd – the most profound example we can think of is salt. Physicians would have you believe that you need little or no salt (they must think we’re dumber than cows for the first food item a good husbandry man puts out for his livestock is a salt block!), however, the multibillion dollar a year snack food industry is well aware of your need and craving for salt and other minerals. Salt and salt rich clays were the first mineral food supplement consciously used by man, probably since the dawn of time….”

P20 Excerpt “Rare Earths, Forbidden Cures” , Joel D Wallach 1994.

Grains and dried beans are not on the Paleo diet. Dire warnings on anti nutrients for seeds and grains are somewhat overdone. We know that cooking, grinding or soaking those foods which have a self-preservation mechanism which will deactivate the toxins. However, I was pleased to see a caution on overeating chia seeds (p124). Dried beans have been used for millennia in many traditional societies as a basic food staple without being genetically compromised. Grains and beans can be ground up, water added to make a paste and made into small flat breads, laid out on stones and cooked by the sun. Stone age food!

To know which grains and beans are ok for you; refer to Eat Right for Your Type by Peter D’Adamo .

Solanine vegetables from the tobacco family

Good information on night shade vegetables (solanine-tobacco family). Potatoes, eggplant, tomato, capsicum which are to be avoided by blood type A people. Unless grown organically potatoes and tomatoes ought to be restricted generally. Most tomatoes now grown hydroponically which means they have a limited mineral uptake, and we need all our minerals.

Organic vs. Conventional foods

The comments are relative to USA organics, not Australian organic standards which are different. It’s interesting he says to not bother with organic foods, but then says if you don’t want chemicals in your veggies, eat organic. This book is supposed to be info on how to eat when chemicals were not used in agriculture. My advice is to eat certified organic and/or from markets which supply fresh local foods, wherever you can.

Interestingly, when I checked to confirm the findings of the chart on p30 that compares the nutrient levels of organic to conventional there was no reference. I question the result published as I have seen laboratory reports that indicate higher mineral content in Certified Organic produce.

On Vegetarianism; I agree we need flesh animal, fowl and fish foods for life long health. I was a vegetarian for 20 years and ate no flesh meat or dairy. I found it difficult to get enough protein and when the Blood Type Protocol came to Australia in 1998 I realised that with “O” blood, I was missing red meats. Blood Type “A” digests fish and fowl best. For those who choose to not eat the flesh of something that has lived, they do need to be very informed on the food supplying optimum protein. Grains and beans are very necessary, and I lived a very healthy life as a non flesh food vegetarian while I could maintain the balance in my diet and avoid stress overload.

I agree with dairy products as a non food these days. Supermarket milk is a chemical hormonal concoction, and not what anyone would want as a food. Advice to eliminate dairy products to avoid breast cancer is spot on. Raw milk and products made from it are almost unattainable in Australia unfortunately. Pasteurisation is law and all our cheeses and yoghurts are made with this cooked milk also, even goat & sheep yoghurts. Raw milk and cheese made from raw milk as in Europe are healthy foods.

See Sally Fallon’s book “Nourishing Traditions” in Appendix A for further info on milks.

Chapter 2 “The Truth about Saturated Fat” is a must read. Basically, it tells us that saturated fat is not the culprit causing elevated cholesterol and heart disease. Refined carbohydrates and processed foods generally contribute to heart disease. For people who continue to believe the myth that cholesterol causes heart disease, this is important information for them. Stop eating low fat and low cholesterol foods; eat healthy saturated fat, omega fats, monounsaturated olive oil and organic eggs and your cholesterol will normalise. You may need to fix the liver with herbs first as the liver is the regulator of cholesterol in the body.

Conclusion

The wheel is slowly turning towards what we ate before “science” told us that what we were eating was not healthy, when in fact it was healthy.

This book is an excellent path to good health we had then, and while it is really about what we ate up to fifty years ago, the novel idea that it is Palaeolithic food, attracts people to it. So, it achieves the purpose: restoring people to health via foods and natural means,

The 7 day diet plan is excellent. Basically, it’s an unprocessed food regime, and an excellent balanced protocol easily followed and especially beneficial for people who have been conditioned to the low protein, carbohydrate with refined wheaten food at every meal, eat no fat, artificial sugar diet food regime, promulgated by today’s society.

It is in a similar vein to foods recommended in the books listed in Appendix A and in many other publications.

The Paleo diet assumes we were all hunter gatherers, which we may well have been. However, we are not all the same, the difference is in our blood composition. Where we lived dictated what we hunted and gathered, determined our genetic type and defined our blood type. This then further defined our food, lifestyle and exercise choices for our survival and optimum health. I recommend the book written by Peter D’Adamo “Eat Right for Your Type”, as it is more specific, with foods designated for hunter gatherer Blood Group O (protein type), Blood group A (Carbohydrate type) and Blood Groups AB & B (mixed types).

APPENDIX A

Dr Robert Atkins M.D. in 1972 published his initial book Dr Atkins’ Diet Revolution. This book detailed how a low carbohydrate, high protein diet with supplements and therapies could address most major health ailments. It became one of the top fifty best-selling books of all time. Here was the key to weight loss, blood sugar control, along with other essential health promoting aspects. This was a specifically controlled food regime which reversed chronic illness with a method for everyone to be able to individualise a food plan for life to maintain health.
Dr Ronald F Schmid published 1987 “Native Nutrition, eating according to Ancestral Wisdom”.
Dr Peter J. D’Adamo published 1998 “Eat Right for you Type” with Blood Group O people (hunter gatherers) thriving on protein and using very little to no grains. This body of work recognises the physiology of the blood, the difference in digestive function of the blood groups and the reality that one plan does not fit all.
Dr Peter J D’Adamo published 2008 The Geno Type Diet is an extension of the Blood Type Protocol, further refining foods according to ancestral type.
Dr Mercola’s published 2003 The No-Grain Diet promoted a protein rich diet of unprocessed foods, saturated and omega fats, vegetables, fruits, nuts & seeds.
Sally Fallon & Mary Enig PhD published 1999 “Nourishing Traditions”. Weston A. Price’s Nutrition and Physical Degeneration was first published in 1939 and highlighted the result of processed foods on the health of the human race. Sally Fallon & Mary Enig PHD, transformed this work into a practical way of using his findings by showing how to use food in original form from whatever area of the world you come, without processed foods in any form. It has excellent information on traditional foods made from the fresh milk of herding animals and relevant information on butter, cream, yoghurts as well as milk from cow, goat, sheep, etc. Saturated fats, meats, cultured foods; vegetables abound in this extraordinarily researched publication, a must for every family.
Cyndi O’Meara published 1998 “Changing Habits Changing Lives”, is an informative book with Australian facts and figures and advises a diet of foods unchanged by man also. Much information on fats, chemicals, technological foods is similar to The Paleo Diet information.

Lesley Parker ND ANPA April 2013

Please Note

The opinions expressed in this review are my own, based on thirty years of experience as a clinical naturopath, researcher and writer and are meant to add to the knowledge this book brings to the reader. I encourage everyone to do their own research and invite comment and discussion as I continue to learn more and more as the years go by.