The NBA and Dr. Cate ... Who knew? I'm a Paleo Low Carber!!

I have decided to adopt the paleo template.  As anyone who reads this blog knows, just about any diet that doesn't involve dining with Marie (Callender), Debbie (comma Little), Ronald (McDonald) and Wendy can and will be *fit* into the paleo template!  Let's see there's:
  • WAPF:  Eh, nevermind the sprouted grains and dairy of all manner, we're all on the same team.
  • Vegan:  Well ... it is real food.  We can always try to convert them.
  • Atkins:  What's a Quest Bar between friends?  Swap the Splenda for Stevia and we've got a deal.
  • Zone:  The cause of every eating disorder including potentially Evander Holyfield according to the paleorati, but Sears cites Eaton so there's that.
  • Mediterranean:  Well that's just really paleo low carb right?
  • The Tequila Diet:  It IS paleo.  STFU!
  • Perfect Health Diet:  Grok sooooo ate white rice and coconut oil!
  • Carb Nite?:  Shhhhhhh he didn't really mean to front load junk food during your back loading.  
  • Gluten Free?:  Well that's paleo
  • Sugar Free?:  Well that's paleo
  • Wheat Belly?:  He's not paleo but he's still recovering from Grain Brain
It's all paleo because I now realize that paleo is only a 30 day elimination diet.  After that you can eat anything -- some call that tinkering, others biohacking -- call it a "paleo template" and be part of the movement.  Just don't call it moderation.  All that stuff about the last 10,000 years being a microsecond compared to all of human evolution ... forget that because you can heal your genes with bone broth and other foods.

So ... the past couple of days Facebook and Twitter have been quite abuzz over NBA Insider columns:

Nutrition in the NBA; Part I: Lessons learned in L.A. help Howard's career
(I'm told a counterpoint Part III will be forthcoming)

Dr. Cate Shanahan has been advising the LA Lakers on nutrition!  This is somewhat old news as the big kahuna lowcarber himsel was all over Kobe Bryant supposedly going ketogenic back in June when this article came out:


In the case of Dwight Howard, we were talking about a man who consumed the equivalent of 23 candy bars worth of sugar per day, cutting it all out and eating real food for a change.  C'mon.  Of course he's going to feel better.  But Dr. Cate saw neurological damage like she imagines in her other pre-diabetic patients!  Interestingly Howards blood sugar readings are not actually revealed, just described as sky high compared to what a ripped athlete such as he is should have.

Anyone catch that one?  Twenty-three candy bars worth of sugar a day.  Ripped.  Paging Dr. Lustig!

Somehow, based on her husband sending him a copy of Deep (woo woo) Nutrition, Gary Vitti contracted Dr. Cate to consult with the Lakers.  In June the intervention was described thusly:  For Kobe, 
"lean meat and vegetables, and avoiding carbohydrates, especially sugar" 
... but also for the team 
"Breakfast usually consists of an omelet station and a buffet with things like whole wheat pancakes and oatmeal. Lunch includes a pasta station and a buffet with two kinds of meat and lots of green leafy vegetables."
Hardly sounds low carb or paleo to me! But then Shanahan really comes from more WAPF roots and struggles with that while chasing the current trending marketing label.

Now to Howard, in June, his diet was described as 
"eating the equivalent of something like 23 Hershey bars a day ... A lot of that was fruit, which is supposed to be good, but besides the vitamin C he was getting, there was a lot of sugar. He'd have a lot of energy, then get these insulin spikes and crash really quick."
Fast forward to a couple days ago and he was
"Like an addict" and "had candy and sugary drinks stashed everywhere -- from his kitchen cabinets to a drawer next to his bed to the backpack he toted to games and practices."
Will the real pre-Cate Howard please stand up??  Fast forwarding to Kobe now.   Well he's finally back from his 8 month rehabbing for his injury (the Lakers were riddled with injuries last season, coincidence? Probably, but ...) and he 
"has adopted some aspects of the diet that he believes promote healing".
Some? Paleo template!!! Kobe is Paleo! He says now:
"It's a different philosophy ... It's something that we all had to adjust to, but we trust Dr. Cate implicitly. I've seen great results from it from when I started doing it last year -- watching your sugar intake, making sure you're eating healthy fats. You've got to find a balance in that system. It's worked well for me." 
That's great. So cut out junk food and eat an avocado and some grassfed beef instead. Starches aren't mentioned so I presume he is eating those. What's really worked for Kobe? Bone broth!
"That's the part of the diet that Bryant has thoroughly embraced, though he's been more cautious about other aspects. "  
It helped his joints and
"He's excellent when it comes to making sure that every meal, he's getting some of this liquid-gold bone broth. ... It's comfort food."   
Not to be a Debbie Downer here, but the very next sentence is that, like some others, he's not on board 100% ... sounds like not very much at all.  But bone broth ... check!  I'm there!!  This is not paleo though, sorry.  Grok had no pot to make this in.

OK ... so:
The Lakers' program is called PRO Nutrition, which somewhat obtusely stands for Performance, Recovery and Orthogenesis -- the latter being the theory that evolution is strongly influenced by environmental factors, such as diet. It seems extreme because it has basically turned the government's sacred food pyramid upside-down. Shanahan wants the players to get at least 50 percent of their calories from fat, and no more than 25 percent each from protein and carbohydrates. Wait, what? That's right. Basically the opposite of what you and everyone else alive have been doing for years.
Oops.
Well sounds like the pretty usual distortion of the paleo diet envisioned by Eaton and Konner, or used in any study citing a "paleolithic style" diet.  

So influenced by his wife instead of Shanahan, UConn alum Ray Allen (love me some Ray!) has "gone paleo" -- well ... sorta.  No doubt his wife found the diet through researching for their T1 diabetic son.  
"I cut everything out, and within three weeks I lost 10 pounds," Allen said. "I stuck with it all summer long and learned to eat even cleaner."
Allen confronted his one dilemma with the program once training camp began. With his activity level ramped up -- practices, weightlifting sessions, the endless shooting he does to hone his craft -- he began to feel depleted. So he did something that even one of the world's top proponents of the Paleo diet acknowledges is OK for athletes with a high activity level: He increased his consumption of carbs.
Those dastardly carbs.  Correct me if I'm wrong but was Grok sedentary?  Granted we're talking elite athletes here, but this carbs are only for athletes crap has got to go.  Enter my fave guru! 
"That's absolutely what needs to be done," said Robb Wolf, a biochemist, author of the New York Times best-seller, "The Paleo Solution" and a student of Paleolithic nutrition expert Loren Cordain.
"When you start looking at any type of high-level athlete, they need a lot of carbs to be able to function optimally – potatoes, some sweet potatoes, some white rice," Wolf said. "That's spot on to make this thing work."
The author got sloppy there and left out the "former" ... but the student of Loren Cordain is quite humorous at this point.  When you look at all these adrenally fatigued, caffeine swigging paleos, you'd think they might consider that they, too, could use a few carbohydrates when they feel depleted.  Remember -- Dwight Howard on 23 candy bar levels of sugar = RIPPED.    But Robb didn't always think this was the way to make this thing work!  


But now Wolf doesn't say that these athletes need carbs.  They need A LOT of carbs.  Even Mr. NuttyK burns through 200g/day at rest!   But this is not what Cate Shanahan is advising.

Hold the Asylum Presses!  Part III is out!  

In this we learn of more players still that are pale..  low c ...  Not so fast!  Apparently out of the 450 some-odd players, you've got a dozen or so that are giving something modified like paleoish a try.  Take, for example, Roy Hibbert.  He's working with a Nutrition PhD Doctor Mike Roussell.  Some quotes:
After tinkering with nutrient proportions, the plan for Hibbert is about 40 percent carbs, 30 percent proteins and 30 percent fats -- more moderate than the Lakers' program, which calls for 50 percent of calories to come from healthy fats.
"We'll do whole grains, brown rice, quinoa, flax pasta," Roussell said. ...
Roussell characterizes his approach as "modified Paleo," but views some aspects of that approach as "overly restrictive without reason. ... Just to say, 'We're not going to eat dairy and beans because the caveman didn't do that,' that doesn't necessarily make sense."
Or grains, apparently.   You see:
[Roussell] immediately eliminated sugars and processed foods from Hibbert's diet. Grains and dairy were out, too, reintroduced once Hibbert underwent food sensitivity tests that revealed he was not allergic to those foods.
Now call me crazy but I'm looking at that diet and thinking Zone macros, or Mediterranean with an extra kick of protein.  It's certainly not low carb, and don't give me the "well it's lower than the SAD" crap either.

And the Lakers?  Repeating but summing up we get:
[They have] gone all-in with a high-fat, low-carb, grass-fed, real-food diet. Players from Blake Griffin and Allen to Luis Scola and Manu Ginobili are doing some form of the Paleo diet -- modified with extra carbs to fuel their training.

The Lakers' approach is geared toward reprogramming the body to burn fat for fuel instead of glucose. It's a state known as ketosis, under which studies have shown that some athletes -- like cyclists -- perform very well. But it may take an athlete 2-3 years of a strict low-carb diet -- 5-10 percent of calories from carbs -- to achieve that state, and it's not for everyone.
So ... low carb diet modified with extra carbs. That would be WHAT exactly??

I don't get how anyone could use Deep Nutrition as a promo or basis for a diet program.   It is filled with woo woo and not a whole lot more. There's no diet per se, or perhaps I just didn't get to that part because I've only read small sections here and there.   She has her Four Pillars that she says ties together the major healthy diets of the world:  Okinawan, Mediterranean and French.  (Sorry paleo frost giants, no Inuit here).   They apparently share a love of meat on the bone, organ meats, fermented & sprouted foods, and fresh uncooked food.    But Shanahan makes some bizarre statements in this book, some of which have zero to do with nutrition and diet.  Stuff about wanting your child to be physically attractive so they can be successful and the whole second siblings thing (Google it, I'd rather not even link!!).  Also for a doctor, ANY doctor to say that weight loss involves eating so that fat cells convert to healthier tissues is too much to ignore.   She's "the brains" of this NBA thing, a board-certified doctor.    {{SIGH}}

Oh hey!  I almost forgot ... The reason I wrote this in the first place was that I had a Twitter exchange with Dr. Dayspring (of LDL-P fame).


A lot of low carbers and paleos alike are excited by this NBA stuff.  But if you read between the lines, there doesn't seem to be a single one that is 100% on board.  I guess that's what the promised counterpoint in the Part III was.


So, I'm going to make an announcement today. 


I am low carb!
I am paleo!

Yes, my deep dark secret is that I have been following a modified low carb paleo diet for years now ... in secrecy and silence.  Since I tolerate grains, dairy and legumes, I include all of these in my diet.  And it's still low carb if I call it that and modify it on days I need carbs to keep from "feeling depleted".   I think I'll call it CarbSane Paleo™ (sorry Barry Sears, Zone is sooooo 2008), start a sister blog, and start posting helpful paleo/LC inspired memes.  Like this one:


I finally belong ;-)  

Comments

Karen Norris said…
Weirdo!!! ;))
I'm still struggling with trying to ditch low carb. Make the break for a few days then go right back! I think I'm afraid if the higher but said to be ok bg numbers. Sigh :(
Erik Cisler said…
Re: bone broth not being possible - it was definitely possible.

See: Evidence for Bone Grease Rendering During the Upper Paleolithic at Vale Boi (Algarve, Portugal) (http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mstiner/pdf/Manne_etal2005.pdf)

". For this extraction technique, large
amounts of spongy bone tissues of vertebrae and
softer limb ends (Figure 3) are fragmented or
pulverized, and then boiled in water by such methods
as adding heated stones to the mixture."
carbsane said…
Thanks for the link! Very interesting.


So in the upper paleolithic they would heat water by adding heated stones to bones and water for the purpose of melting the fat and skimming it off so that it could be stored. Kinda like lard although not from bones.

Let's be fair, this isn't the kind of bone broth we're talking about here which generally involves several hours (in the video the Shanahans do 12, I've done mine longer than that sometimes ... depends on when I start) of temperature controlled simmering. The final product to be the water where I generally remove any fat. These broths are mostly "magic" for their mineral content and collagen content, not rendered fat.


Upper Paleolithic! Hmmmm ... I wonder what else humans might have been consuming by that time. ;-)
charles grashow said…
1) Here's the pdf - the link provided doesn't work
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~mstiner/pdf/Manne_etal2005.pdf

2) As to Dayspring - please explain how the overall approach can be low carb and not focused on fat

3) Dayspring has also said the appx 1/3 of people who go low carb high fat develop lipid abnormalities - will all of the ball players get lipid tests ever 3-6 months or so

4) What blood tests have the players taken to establish a baseline? These are the tests Dr Dayspring recommends (sent to me in an e-mail)

The extent of a workup depends on the risk of the patient with more thorough investigation in the higher risk patient. Realize also that I have been a top level referral lipidologist who always saw the super risky folks, so patients get extensive testing. But dsince so many get cardiometabolic (CM) disease and the earlier it is discovered, the earlier it van be treated, I would advise the following for all.

Here are the markers that really provide insight as to establishing CM risk, helping
decide a proper treatment regimen, and some serving as goals of therapy

Full chem profile, CBC, TSH, Cystatin C,
urine microalbuminn
LipidProfile
Sterol profile: markers of cholesterol absorption and synthesis
Full NMR panel to include Lp-IR score
Apolipoprotein B
Apolipoprotein A-I
Vitamin D (25-OH D)
Homocysteine
hs-CRP
Myeloperoxidase
Lp-PLA2
NT-proBNP
Galectin 3
Vitamin B12
Omega 3 Index

Onetime tests
Lp(a) - with reflex to Lp(a)-P if elevated
ApoE genotype
MTHFR genotype
IR markers
HgbA1c
Fructosamine
Glycation gap
Insulin and C-peptide and prouinsulin
HOMA IR Score
Leptin
Adiponectin
alpha hydroxyl butyrate
Oleic acid
Linoleoyl-GPC
Anti GAD antibody (one time test)
Urine Aspirin Works (dehydrothromboxane B2) as platelet function test

5) I find it strange that Kobe tore his achilles tendon after going on a paleo type diet.

Just remember - we are all Paleo, Primal, Ancestral, WAPF, vegan, vegetarian, fruitarian, pescatarian - We are Human - we can survive and thrive on ANY diet
carbsane said…
Thanks! :)
carbsane said…
Do what you're comfortable with Karen. I am not you in your body and I know you're not doing the ridiculous stick of butter nonsense. Those are the folks I have the most concern for because so many are reporting worsening BG's even if they weren't diabetic to begin with!
carbsane said…
They're doing the bulletproof coffee crap too so who knows about lipids! I find it odd that Howard's sugars are described as "sky high" but no numbers. My guess is they were normal just over the arbitrary 100 mg/dL or something the low carbers think is ideal in any situation. Dayspring knows his lipids, but he seems to have been taken in by Taubes and company.

These are young athletes so it WOULD be interesting to see if they were eating high fat what it did, but aside from the reference to the BPC, most seem to be eating leaner meats, avocados and nuts and stuff from the few pictures and descriptions available.
Karen Norris said…
Lol no shusi is slimy!! Lol
Im trying for the slowly!! Grin
And yes, no stick o butter!
charles grashow said…
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/13/in-food-cravings-sugar-trumps-fat/

What makes a milkshake so irresistible?

Is it the sweet flavor that our taste buds are after? Or the smooth and creamy texture? Or perhaps it is the copious blend of fat and sugar?

An intriguing new study suggests that what really draws people to such treats, and prompts them to eat much more than perhaps they know they should, is not the fat that they contain, but primarily the sugar.

The new research tracked brain activity in more than 100 high school students as they drank chocolate-flavored milkshakes that were identical in calories but either high in sugar and low in fat, or vice versa. While both kinds of shakes lit up pleasure centers in the brain, those that were high in sugar did so far more effectively, firing up a food-reward network that plays a role in compulsive eating.

To their surprise, the researchers found that sugar was so powerful a stimulus that it overshadowed fat, even when the two were combined in large amounts. High sugar shakes that were low in fat ramped up the reward circuitry just as strongly as the more decadent shakes that paired sugar and fat in large quantities, suggesting that fat was a
runner-up to sugar, said Eric Stice, the lead author of the study, which was funded by the National Institutes of Health and published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24132980

DESIGN:
Functional magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess the neural response to the intake of high-fat/high-sugar, high-fat/low-sugar, low-fat/high-sugar, and low-fat/low-sugar chocolate milkshakes and a tasteless solution in 106 lean adolescents (mean ± SD
age = 15.00 ± 0.88 y). Analyses contrasted the activation to the various milkshakes.

RESULTS:
High-fat compared with high-sugar equicaloric milkshakes caused greater activation in the bilateral caudate, postcentral gyrus, hippocampus, and inferior frontal gyrus. High-sugar compared with high-fat equicaloric milkshakes caused greater activation in the bilateral insula extending into the putamen, the Rolandic operculum, and thalamus, which produced large activation regions. Increasing sugar in low-fat milkshakes caused greater
activation in the bilateral insula and Rolandic operculum; increasing fat content did not elicit greater activation in any region.

CONCLUSIONS:
Fat caused greater activation of the caudate and oral somatosensory regions than did sugar, sugar caused greater activation in the putamen and gustatory regions than did fat, increasing sugar caused greater activity in gustatory regions, and increasing fat did not affect the activation. Results imply that sugar more effectively recruits reward and gustatory regions, suggesting that policy, prevention, and treatment interventions should prioritize reductions in sugar intake
Sanjeev Sharma said…
"irony much" ?

Deep thoughts ... on a power point slide - ummm ...


"get rid of inflammation" ... what if the specific inflammation is a NEEDED, appropriate, adaptive response?

"that blocks cellular communication" ... riiiight ... for a lot of situations, the inflammation IS the communication, or is the proper response to correct communication, isn't it?

"convert fat cells into healthier tissues"

O

M

G

OH EM GEEEE ... lemme just grab a philosopher's stone or http://static4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130730214417/fma/images/c/c2/Stones.png , and Edward Elric's assistance. but wait a minute ... in Elric's world and this one, wishful thinking is for sh*t and there's the law of equivalent exchangeto consider.

FORGET ABOUT SCIENTISTS AND SKEPTICS ... Even people good FICTION WRITERS won't give in to the simplistic, easy solutions these marketers spout.


I guess that wherever she's from

"deep thoughts"

means "up to my ears in BS"
charles grashow said…
Here's the full paper

http://www.kickthecan.info/files/documents/Stice_Relative_ability_of_fat_%26_sugar_tastes_to_activate_reward_gustatory_and_somatosensory_regions_AJCN_2013.pdf
carbsane said…
Didn't mean to trick anybody -- the slide is my making. A take on Deep Thoughts by Jack Handey from Saturday Night Live. That is, however, a quote from her book Deep Nutrition.
Sanjeev Sharma said…
I misunderstood this:

" start a sister blog, and start posting helpful paleo/LC inspired memes. Like this one:"

to mean you'll be reprinting questionable stuff you find from them.

you GOT ME ... I'll be cringing at this for a bit. ugh.
carbsane said…
Don't stress it!! :D
Sanjeev Sharma said…
I won't. The project that's taking almost all my time's still ongoing so I can't stress about much other than that. I took a day break so could surf a little but will be back at it tomorrow (contracting means you can work yourself to death)
charles grashow said…
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/12-days-of-cholesterol-clarity-day-6-7-winners/21213
Screennamerequired said…
I posted the other week about my paleo diet that includes very little fat and meat but does include legumes, rice, orange juice, rye, millet, oats and bread.

It was funny the amount of "you're still paleo" comments both Don matesz and Melissa Mcewen received when they openly ditched paleo.

It seems as long as you dismiss the entire lipid hypothesis and don't express any concern about the amount of saturated fat and meat people are eating you can still be considered paleo it seems. (Cordain is exluded in this, he just isn't up to date on the science or he's just trying to please the CW)

Either that or you can just agree that the food pyramid made us all fat and sick.
Screennamerequired said…
I just read that Denise Mingers book is for sale via Mark sissons website.

This is a little awkward considering it has 2 chapters titled

How to determine whom and what to trust for health information
How to spot a charlatan and run for the hills away from poor nutritional advice
carbsane said…
Yeah ... awkward!
carbsane said…
I thought of your post when I read Dayspring's tweets!


For the longest time Jimmy Moore had all sorts of people who weren't LC on his show but he would find a way to almost make it seem like they were. If any expression was made to limit sugar or carbs in any way this was played up.

What unites paleo these days is, as you say, not what they're for really, but what they are against which isn't even foods so much as that alienates too many they need to count as theirs. Against healthywholegrains and food pyramid. Against mainstream medicine. Against all pharmaceuticals. Against common social norms too it would seem!
charles grashow said…
This question has always interested me. The Masai are held up as examples of high fat eating that doesn't impact on health. Yet all of the studies used show that the Masai had very low TC. SO - if TC doesn't matter why use the very low TC Masai people as an example?
carbsane said…
Divert and distract and confuse.


The Masai make the worst case in any case because it is only males of a certain age that engage in what we have come to equate with their diet. These are also the very active subset of the population. And unless someone is advocating blood as a food source .....
charles grashow said…
http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1135650


Look at Fig 1 - how can the paleo people argue for higher TC?
charles grashow said…
http://savingdinner.com/articles/paleo-primal-whats-difference/

Look at the comparison chart

Paleo = AVOID saturated fats, limit fatty meats, eggs and ghee

BUT - in the article she says "Some paleo folks avoid saturated fats and limit their intake of fatty meats, eggs (6 per day) and butter."


SO - what is it - 6 eggs per day are allowed but you must avoid saturated fats?


I'm SO confused - does ANYONE out there have a clue?
Screennamerequired said…
"Divert and distract and confuse."


So true. They are not even close to a consensus, one day high cholesterol is good, the next it's a certain sub class that's most important. LDL-p was embraced after Peter attia's series (The first sensible conclusion they have come to). That was until the high fatters started getting a NMR and noticed they almost all have a high particle count, then they decided it didn't really matter. It's all about inflammation and a LDL of 2654 is totally fine, as long as your ratios are good.
charles grashow said…
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/12-days-of-cholesterol-clarity-day-6-7-winners/21213

Read the moment of clarity by Dr Siri-Tarino
Battousai said…
If I remember correctly, the Jaminets wrote a series of articles about that, in which they posited that Cordain and al. relied on studies with faulty testing methods, coming to the conclusion that the TC of traditional peoples is, in fact, significantly higher across the board (Surprise, Surprise!).
carbsane said…
Cholesterol is like the diet game too. TC/LDL irrelevant ... but our diet lowers it (Reno911) ... oh wait ... it raises HDL/lowers trig ... TC/LDL wasn't meant to be that low ... lower TC/LDL is worse than high ... and round and round we go!
charles grashow said…
Because they can NEVER admit that saturated fat (in unlimited quantities) or diets of 75%+ fat might just be bad for you!

Like the dust-up between Nikoley and JM over RS
http://freetheanimal.com/2013/12/over-jimmy-moores.html
jesse said…
how did Roussel test the allergies?
carbsane said…
No idea, sorry.
lucyricardanon said…
I do save the fat though! I strain out all the solids, put the broth/stock in the fridge, take the fat off the top after it hardens, wash it, and put it in chunks in the freezer. I cook with it, and it's great for seasoning cast iron pans.
lucyricardanon said…
What does this even mean? "Of course athletes load up [on carbs?] prior to activity but the overall approach is low carb and not focused on fat." I mean for an athlete "prior to activity" is pretty much every day, so how is the "overall approach" low carb and what does "not focused on fat" mean? I'm so confused!
jesse said…
well it was kind of a rhetorical in that your article shames them for calling it paleo while including things that are tolerated. which i mostly agree with, so i'm not trolling, but at the same time what is a reasonable test for allergy to a grain? pin prick tests, blood tests, etc... all seem to have their flaws. So you end up with people who believe they tolerate grains because they checked for one gliadin antibody and failed. Hibbert may likely be grain intolerant and may be better off choosing other carb sources. Since you don't know what test was used then you don't know the validity and can't really make the claim that "in some cases grains are paleo if they are tolerated". I don't think that line has been crossed. In one of the other CBS NBA articles they mentioned Chris Paul being surprised by an egg allergy. But maybe it doesn't mean much. Charles Poliqin uses blood testing for allergens and says that almost every one of his athletes is allergic to eggs if they have been consuming them regularly for a long period of time. "everything is paleo, nothing is paleo" seems to be your main argument. I think total carb content is an argument of yesteryear, i think macronutrient ratios will soon be an argument of yesteryear (i hope). but there still is a way of looking at food that may as well be called paleo, and it does allow people to be flexible in their food choices. It seems like you have a problem with that but i don't see why. We have all these instances of specific diets built around the paleo diet and people are free to try them if they don't feel like coming to their own conclusions. that's beneficial to those seeking to leverage what others have already tried and see if they get similar results. Additionally, I don't think armchair quarterbacks have ANY concept of how hard a professional athlete trains, so it's disingenuous to bring up their carb needs on a blog that is not frequented by professional athletes. We know that the pros are not going to read your blog because they have highly qualified, and highly paid, nutritionists tracking everything they do (if they want it). So, clearly their inclusion of carbs doesn't validate a high carb (> 100-150g day) as necessary, optimal, or "paleo". Grok is/was sedentary compared to an NBA starting point guard. By the way, if you haven't read the Micheal Rose's 55 Theses it's great and should help understand why even testing for tolerance of non-ancestral diets and life ways won't mean much over a lifetime and the ancestral/paleo approach is very robust.
carbsane said…
I make mostly chicken broths and don't care for that fat, don't get much out of the pork bones and skin but boy does that gel up like crazy! I use my fat to start fires. .... in the fireplace!
carbsane said…
Poliquin is a quack.


That said ...


"May as well be called paleo"???? Why? How about may as well just be called eating. Paleo and eating a mostly real food based diet are just not the same. Ditto vegan, and LC and any other fear-based diets.

I have no problem at all with a flexible diet. I have a problem with people spouting on and on about leaky gut and AI and lectins and phytates and whatever else is going to kill me in grains, dairy and legumes ... and then the go about eating them anyway and call it a "modified" diet.


As to Hibbert, I really don't care how he was tested. If he doesn't have an issue he doesn't have an issue. And so many of these extreme dieters DEVELOP intolerances they never had before. Great life eh?


I'm crushed that Kobe won't be reading my blog ;-)


Not sure your point. Paleo is a total farce. It could be different, but basically eating like great granny doesn't sell, and neither does eating remotely like Grok either.


Sorry if this comes off disjointed and blunt but it's been a long day and I have zero patience at the moment. :)
jesse said…
May as well be called paleo because the initial approach is to eliminate foods that aren't similar to the ones consumed during the paleolithic period. You could call it whatever you want and paleo seems to have stuck, even whilst becoming straw man for its detractors.


If you dig into epigenetics (see 55 theses i rec'd) you'd see that developing intolerances are the norm. One half of anti-paleo people say that cavemen lived short lives so we can't infer anything from them. They are partially right. Our epigenetic expression which allows us to rapidly adjust to a changing environment and foodscape doesn't necessarily outlive our productive years.


And actually Micheal Pollan has made a career out of eating like grandma. I think you cherry picked the fact that some people include grains into calling paleo a farce. It is what it is. It's an attempt to understand what our species had eaten prior to agriculture. It's a growing science in that more data is uncovered (like when the advent of seed consumption moves back 10k years with a single discovery). Attacking Poliqin personally doesn't change the data he collected on this athletes though, does it? Allergen testing is quackery, in general, is more the point.


I'm sure this is just entertainment for you, but at least you could keep it clean? Clearly there is compelling logic to the ongoing adaptation of species to environment. Why would this not apply to humans? Are you proposing that intelligent design will tell us how many carbs we should eat?? So you like grains, so what? You don't eat paleo and neither do half the people touted in the NBA article. Calling something modified paleo is not the same as calling it paleo. There is no central paleo marketing body that is trying to use Kobe as proof that the paleo diet works. As with anything else people that are looking for pure results will steal from anything that offers an advantage. The disadvantage of a real paleo diet for an athlete is that they are probably too stressed and focused on their athletic goals to miss out on eating their favorite non-paleo foods. Where-as folks such as ourselves have plenty of time to eat cleanly and we have no obligation to perform 40 minutes of intense physical training 7-8 times a week at a world class level. So I cut them some slack.


What you're attacking at the end of the day is some guy writing some articles revealing that NBA players have adopted some stuff from the paleo diet. So? Why try to milk that for anything other than what it is?
charles grashow said…
And of course he's been interviewed by Jimmy Moore

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/4190/478-evolutionary-biologist-michael-rose-on-achieving-biological-immortality-naturally/
charles grashow said…
http://michaelroses55.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/55-theses-explained-final.pdf
charles grashow said…
http://www.peaktestosterone.com/Great_Diet_Smackdown.aspx

Furthermore, this link on the Masai shows that they are incredibly active and have an average BMI of 20.7! Obesity is correspondingly uncommon. In addition, their blood pressure is excellent: an average of 119/71. And no wonder: they follow their cattle on foot through various grazing areas and are extremely athletic and fit. George Mann, a researcher in the 1960's, actually studied the cadavers of hundreds of Masai and found that they actually had as bad or worse arteriosclerosis than the typical Westerner. [1] His conclusion was: "The coronary arteries showed intimal thickening by atherosclerosis which equaled that of old U.S. men. The Masai vessels enlarge with age to more than compensate for this disease. It is speculated that the Masai are protected from their atherosclerosis by physical fitness which causes their coronary vessels to be capacious."

So George Mann discovered that the key to Masai cardiovascular health was essentially the "Training Effect", i.e. their arteries were larger (from exercise) and thus could handle a worse arteriosclerosis. In other words, this simply potentially may show little more than their active lifestyle protected them from the ravages of the Paleolithic Diet. Remember also that saturated fat temporarily hardens the arteries and that researchers have found that one of the cures for this is exercise as I cover in this link. Again, a vigorous, athletic outdoor life may have saved them from their diet for all we know.

One more important point that is missed (or ignored) by proponents of the Paleolithic Diet: the Masai have very low cholesterol. Their total cholesterol is an impressive 152! Contrast this with the typical American who has high blood pressure and total cholesterol in the 180-250 range. Again, this is a critical observation: heart disease is very rare in socities or individuals with cholesterol of 150 or below. George Mann noted that the Masai had relatively few arterial lesions and this was due undoubtedly to their superb lipid profiles. Remember that this will also be good for your sex life: control heart disease and you will have greatly improved erectile dysfunction.

So, again, think of the hypocrisy of the Paleolithic position. Their argument is that cholesterol does not matter and yet their Paleolithic Posterchild, the Masai, is an example of extremely low cholesterol. Nor can they use cultures such as the Tokelua or Pukapuka because these cultures do not fit the traditional hunter gatherer stereotype. Both the Tokeluans and Pukapukans regularly eat fish, a very heart healthy food. (The same can be said of the Eskimos by the way).
charles grashow said…
Please provide a list of foods consumed during the paleolithic period. Since the paleolithic period covers a period from 2.6 million years ago, to the end of the Pleistocene around 10,000 BP exactly what part of this time frame are you talking about?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleolithic

For example

http://www.eva.mpg.de/evolution/staff/richards/pdf/Richards_EJCN.pdf

The fact is we don't know exactly what constitutes a "paleo diet" - it's ALL guess work.
carbsane said…
55 theses received on epigenetics ... Care to share who you are?
carbsane said…
I'll respond in more detail later, but could you please define a paleo diet for me? Thanks!
jesse said…
I didn't realize he'd been interviewed by Jimmy. That's the first contact I'm aware of with the diet circles. I normally use this link which has the commentary: http://55theses.org/the-55-theses/55-theses-full-text-commentary/ (note, i didn't click your link maybe it has commentary too, but i couldn't have done it without the commentary) :)
jesse said…
replying to you both here. Clearly the paleo diet is as much guesswork as any other anthropological study. I don't see people bashing other anthropology fields in the same way (maybe because I don't read those blogs). Anyway, in my mind it's a lot easier to say what wasn't consumed pre agriculture (and what time of year it wasn't consumed) than what was. Apparently a lot of the foods we have now didn't even exist, and we probably ate a lot of foods that aren't even considered foods by *most* people now, i.e. bugs, roots, algaes, etc... I'm not into paleo re-enactment myself, so I simply did what Evelyn is shaming. I used a "paleo diet" (it was low carb, fwiw) and discovered that i felt better even though i thought I felt fine to begin with. So I spent some time experimenting with the foods I had eliminated and ended up keeping some eliminated, or minimized, and consume the rest. it doesn't bother me that this won't amount to the same list of foods for every person and that the result is often called a paleo diet. the reason i took the time to respond to this post is that i don't think the sloppy use of the term paleo diet means anything with respect to the few proponents of the paleo diet and their coherence.


evelyn, i'm just jesse. i read stuff on the internet, i like to discuss things, i'm a consumer, not a blogger/writer/participant for the most part. I'm a big fan of the NBA and have shared those articles with quite a few friends because I think it's a step in the right direction for many of them who are just weekend warrior athletes such as myself. I don't believe in a lot of the paleo dogma, and yet i still think the paleo logic (which is evolving, har) is superior to the pathological view most moderns have of their body and biology which seems to be that our body is almost out to get us and if it wasn't for modern medicine, the mediterranean diet, and the FDA we'd all have heart attacks by 58. (note, i'm explicitly not saying that you take this stance or that it's the only alternative to paleo). There are so many voices out there, a lot to learn. I have gone through periods of hatred of the term paleo because of the fact that it's a meme... but at the end of the day it allows for a very nuanced and personalized approach which has a solid logic and base behind it. It also raises a lot of questions about current grocery store stock and what the hell we were all eating before we started eating real food. People can go on about focusing on whole foods but if all you have to base it on is studies and current nutritional science you don't have much to go on. After all of this I don't actually know what Evelyn eats, to be honest. I've been involved in other pursuits where the media (for lack of a better word) have co-opted terms from the real knowledge base and spread them so thin they become meaningless. But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. ?
carbsane said…
Clearly the paleo diet is as much guesswork as any other anthropological study. I don't see people bashing other anthropology fields in the same way

Perhaps because they are real anthropological studies and not some smoothie of hunter gather diets from an ethnographic atlas?

Re: epigenetics

This is the biggest sticking point. Either we've evolved and adapted or we haven't. The new "paleo doc" to the NBA stars thinks you can change your DNA by what you eat! (and a whole lot of other whooey)

Re: paleo as elimination diet

This is bizarre! Firstly, in terms of intolerances, paleo doesn't cut out many known foods like eggs, nuts (besides peanuts which aren't a nut but ...) and seafood (that's a big one!). It is also not prescribed in any formal fashion to properly address intolerances. I hang out with a lot of ex-paleos these days who were convinced they had gluten issues, and such, who are perfectly fine now. I don't think a diet that will decrease the possible foods one can eat to the point of wasting away is a good idea and yet there are examples of that in the paleo community.

But then if you add back in all sorts of foods it's just not paleo. It's food! You can't write books claiming all manner of toxicities and negative impacts on health and then say, well, if you tolerate it ...

You seem to dislike the Mediterranean diet. Why? It's probably what you eat! Hibbert is not eating paleo. He's eating a Mediterranean Zone if you want to put a label on it.

evelyn, i'm just jesse.

Sorry about that, I misinterpreted your 55 theses comment.

But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater. ?



No please let's throw out the baby. I'm told all the paleo stuff predating 2010 is no longer valid so ... It's a marketing label and the leaders have designs on having it go mainstream and into the education system. So long as the basic diet is ill defined and there's an inextricable tie to total woo woo (made up diseases, low stomach acid nonsense, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, and so much more) I do not want to see this happen because the messages are confusing enough without this. That's just the way I feel.


Am I happy for NBA players? Sure. But do we need this paleo stuff? No!
charles grashow said…
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/12-days-of-cholesterol-clarity-day-9-winner/21278

Look at the moment of clarity from Paul Jaminet - "Nearly EVERY HEALTH PERSON around the world has total cholesterol OVER 200 mg/dl." WTF!!!
jesse said…
>>evelyn, i'm just jesse.

>Sorry about that, I misinterpreted your 55 theses comment.



no need to be sorry, i'm happy to be jesse...


Thanks for the discussion. I'm pretty sure you get the point and see/know of the value of evolutionary biology. I'm not sure that I get your point, which may be a cynical point in which case I do see it, but either way I'm fine to drop this. Since I ended up on your blog though I saw something funny on another post that I will comment on.
charles grashow said…
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/whats-all-the-fuss-about-resistant-starch/21292

"Long-time followers will be abundantly aware of my general motto regarding diet and health: find
the plan that will work for you, follow that plan exactly as prescribed
and keep doing that plan as long as it is still working for you.
Despite the fact that the name of my brand is “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb,”
I have ALWAYS held the position that people should stick with what’s
working for them to keep them happy and healthy. Whether that’s vegan,
Paleo, ketogenic, or whatever floats your boat, if you’re doing well on
your preferred way of eating then who am I to say you should do anything
differently? The answer is I wouldn’t. Right now I am doing exceedingly
well staying in a constant state of nutritional ketosis (listen or
watch my lecture about the results of my one-year experiment of testing
blood ketones and other health markers from the 2013 Low-Carb Cruise here).
Because of that, I have no first-hand experience with resistant
starches. But if someone wants to try it, test it out for themselves to
see how they do, and report their findings, I think that’s totally
AWESOME!!!"

ABSOLUTE BS - WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!!